Predator Zoa dying?

[Jaden9933]

All of my zoas and palys were fine when I woke up this morning, except for one of the two Predator zoas. Any ideas of what’s happening? It looks like it’s tuned itself inside out and the insides are sitting on top of it. I adjusted the lights last night to be a little more intense today, so this is my only guess as to what’s happening. Water quality really shouldn’t be the issue, but I can post parameters if needed

 

[Jaden9933]

@Reefing_addiction you have quite a bit of zoas! Has this ever happened to you? Nothing has changed and it’s worrying me a bit

 

[ChiCity]

your lighting change zapped em.

all those zoas from the krak line are sensitive…
maybe not as much as strats,
but they are sensitive nonetheless.

 

[Jaden9933]

your lighting change zapped em.

all those zoas from the krak line are sensitive…
maybe not as much as strats,
but they are sensitive nonetheless.

Any hopes for recovery or anything I can do to help it heal? Also, to avoid the demise of the second polyp

 

[ChiCity]

you could gently cut,
then break away the half with the good polyp…

then give it a lil lugols dip before placing back
(a lil lower than where it was getting zapped)

 

[Jon's Reef]

I wonder if it is the strain also. My understanding is that it was collected only recently (1-2 years), so maybe it has not fully adapted to tank life. I have tried 2 times from 2 different sources. Both eventually melted while I have many different Kraks without issue.

 

[Jaden9933]

you could gently cut,
then break away the half with the good polyp…

then give it a lil lugols dip before placing back
(a lil lower than where it was getting zapped)

So is the one polyp dead or can it recover? If it can recover, do I move them both to the same spot, or the damaged one to a darker area to recover? Really don’t know a lot about zoas when it comes to being damaged

 

[Jaden9933]

I wonder if it is the strain also. My understanding is that it was collected only recently (1-2 years), so maybe it has not fully adapted to tank life. I have tried 2 times from 2 different sources. Both eventually melted while I have many different Kraks without issue.

I can definitely see this being true! However, they were the first zoas of mike to open out of the ≈10 frags I ordered and have always looked the happiest. Sucks that such a small change in lighting could do that to them

 

[Jon's Reef]

Lugol's helps with soft tissue damage and mild infection. If the infection is more severe, an antibiotic is necessary. The infection can come from general tank bacteria that overpowers the polyp in a weakened state.

Sometimes lower light can help, other times I have seen it starve the polyp. Sometimes lower flow can help, other times it hurts because flow can help the polyp purge toxins.

Moving around too much also can cause issues.

 

[Jon's Reef]

I can definitely see this being true! However, they were the first zoas of mike to open out of the ≈10 frags I ordered and have always looked the happiest. Sucks that such a small change in lighting could do that to them

Same here, they opened up right away, but they seem to have no hardiness once they start going down. The key to long term may be that you need a big colony (5-10+) so that if 1-2 are irritated the colony can recover.

 

[Jaden9933]

Same here, they opened up right away, but they seem to have no hardiness once they start going down. The key to long term may be that you need a big colony (5-10+) so that if 1-2 are irritated the colony can recover.

That’s good to know. I really hope it recovers so I can one day have a colony. We will see though. Thank you for the advice!

 

[littlebigreef]

Lugol's helps with soft tissue damage and mild infection. If the infection is more severe, an antibiotic is necessary. The infection can come from general tank bacteria that overpowers the polyp in a weakened state.

Sometimes lower light can help, other times I have seen it starve the polyp. Sometimes lower flow can help, other times it hurts because flow can help the polyp purge toxins.

Moving around too much also can cause issues.

All good points by @Jon's Reef, next step after after lugol's is a furan-2 dip. This antibiotic targets both gram negative and positive bacteria.

As for zoas spitting out their guts that's usually never a good sign. It's possible it might recover but you'll wanna do that dip. In the event it is a bacterial issue breaking the frag and remounting is usually a good way to go.

For the Predator zoas in particular they started popping up last year. Through vendor friends I saw wholesalers offering colonies of 30-40 polyps and they were widely available to any vendor that was willing to pay the premium. So, there's an extremely high likelihood that if you own predators they were fragged off of a wild collected or mariculture colony. This is also why they lost their value so quickly and are so readily available. Now, all that being said, some have adapted to aquarium life pretty well, but you're not dealing with something that was conditioned for months and months in an aquarium before being sold out into the hobby hence why some people are having mixed results. Will they be slow grows like hallucinations, fast but unstable growers like speckled kraks, will they be like strats where nearly every last one crashes out after a year? Time will tell.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

@Reefing_addiction you have quite a bit of zoas! Has this ever happened to you? Nothing has changed and it’s worrying me a bit

Ok so IMO and ime don’t try and frag.

Move to lower light lower flow and leave it alone.

 

[Jaden9933]

All good points by @Jon's Reef, next step after after lugol's is a furan-2 dip. This antibiotic targets both gram negative and positive bacteria.

As for zoas spitting out their guts that's usually never a good sign. It's possible it might recover but you'll wanna do that dip. In the event it is a bacterial issue breaking the frag and remounting is usually a good way to go.

For the Predator zoas in particular they started popping up last year. Through vendor friends I saw wholesalers offering colonies of 30-40 polyps and they were widely available to any vendor that was willing to pay the premium. So, there's an extremely high likelihood that if you own predators they were fragged off of a wild collected or mariculture colony. This is also why they lost their value so quickly and are so readily available. Now, all that being said, some have adapted to aquarium life pretty well, but you're not dealing with something that was conditioned for months and months in an aquarium before being sold out into the hobby hence why some people are having mixed results. Will they be slow grows like hallucinations, fast but unstable growers like speckled kraks, will they be like strats where nearly every last one crashes out after a year? Time will tell.

Thanks for the info! I appreciate it I’ll make sure to stay away from these until I have more experience with their placement/lighting.

 

[Jaden9933]

Ok so IMO and ime don’t try and frag.

Move to lower light lower flow and leave it alone.

I’ll go with this! I ended up raising the light a couple inches and adjusting the setting a bit which seems to have made the coral a bit happier and the spread is more even now.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

I’ll go with this! I ended up raising the light a couple inches and adjusting the setting a bit which seems to have made the coral a bit happier and the spread is more even now.

Any changes in lighting should happen very slow. Depending on the lights some have an acclimation setting. I think most people recommend only a couple % change each day until you hit what you want.