Really Need GOOD advice. All Zoa's gone

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 4, 2018

I'll try to be precise here. Over the last 3 to 4 months, every polyp in my tank is gone. Everyone. I know the obvious thinking is, something is eating it. Let me start there. I thought it was fish and I had ICH going on, so I decided to go fishless and have been for 6 weeks. That did n ot stop it. They all kept disappearing. What was happening was, they would stay closed, sometimes for weeks or a month, eventually shrinking on disappearing completely. If I added a new frag, gone in a week or two. I've done the following: removed all fish, did dips in: revive, iodine, peroxide and bi furan ( not at the same time). I did not see anything in the buckets. I used both white and black buckets. This brings me to the next thing I have amphipods ALL OVER. Thousands (10 of thousands really) and have seen them all over my zoas. Now, I know they can irritate them, but eat them?Not sure. I started this tank 3 years ago and used completely dry rock, so I don't think there are any rouge crabs. I also do not have any astrenia (SP) starfish at all. So two questions here: 1. What could it have been ( I do not have any zoas left right now). 2. If it was something like spiders, how long should I wait before trying zoas again? The rest of my coral seems fine and thriving. LPS, SPS and a ton of mushrooms.

Params:

Salinity: 1.025 (refractometer)
Calcium: 490
ALK: 8.2-8.8
MAG: 1350
Phos: .04-.10
Nitrates: 30PPM
PH: 7.8-8.01 (using a calcium reactor)

Temp: 77-79

Lighting 3 Radion G3's, 11 hour schedule.

TheEngineer · Feb 4, 2018

Sorry to hear this. I don’t have a suggestion for you, unfortunately. I went through the same thing and never was able to find a solution. I tried vitamin c, increased nitrates, dips, everything. I event sent one polyp to @twilliard to look at under his scope. Lots of bacteria but nothing conclusive.

Tagging along to see if anyone has a better idea.

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 4, 2018

TheEngineer said:
Sorry to hear this. I don’t have a suggestion for you, unfortunately. I went through the same thing and never was able to find a solution. I tried vitamin c, increased nitrates, dips, everything. I event sent one polyp to @twilliard to look at under his scope. Lots of bacteria but nothing conclusive.

Tagging along to see if anyone has a better idea.

Are you able to keep them now?

TheEngineer · Feb 4, 2018

Breakthecycle2 said:
Are you able to keep them now?

No. Not only that, I tried pulling some and putting them in a completely sterile tank and they haven’t recovered. It’s been months.

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 4, 2018

TheEngineer said:
No. Not only that, I tried pulling some and putting them in a completely sterile tank and they haven’t recovered. It’s been months.

Awesome. Not what I was hoping for.

TheEngineer · Feb 4, 2018

Sorry... I’m right there with you though

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 4, 2018

Anyone?

Steve88 · Feb 4, 2018

Following

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 5, 2018

Im seriously disappointed no one has any insight here.

K. Steven · Feb 5, 2018

Zoa pox? Nudibranchs? Sundial snails?

Got any pictures?

WWIII · Feb 5, 2018

I would normally say pests, nudis and spiders can hide really, really well, but would think you would eventually see one especially in one of the dips. I know some guys that swear asterina snails have decimated their zoas, then others say no way.

Is your refractometer calibrated? Your parameters look pretty good, nitrate and phosphate are a little high, but wouldn't expect that to wipe out zoas. If something isn't eating them and all your tests are accurate, I'm not sure what could take out every single polyp?

Mr.Fishtank · Feb 5, 2018

Send a sample to Triton or ATI for testing. There might be something too high or maybe too low in your water that is affecting the zoa's. I was having an issue with a purple stylo dying back to almost completely dead. Had my water tested and saw that iodine was really low. Dosed it up some and the stylo is 100% back.

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 5, 2018

K. Steven said:
Zoa pox? Nudibranchs? Sundial snails?

Got any pictures?

No pics. Didn't see any white bumps. Didn't see anything fall off from the dips as mentioned in my opening post.

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 5, 2018

WWIII said:
I would normally say pests, nudis and spiders can hide really, really well, but would think you would eventually see one especially in one of the dips. I know some guys that swear asterina snails have decimated their zoas, then others say no way.

Is your refractometer calibrated? Your parameters look pretty good, nitrate and phosphate are a little high, but wouldn't expect that to wipe out zoas. If something isn't eating them and all your tests are accurate, I'm not sure what could take out every single polyp?

It's calibrated, I double checked. PHOS and NO2 are a little high, but its not effecting my SPS, in fact I didn't have much PE on them and now I have a tremendous amount.

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 5, 2018

Mr.Fishtank said:
Send a sample to Triton or ATI for testing. There might be something too high or maybe too low in your water that is affecting the zoa's. I was having an issue with a purple stylo dying back to almost completely dead. Had my water tested and saw that iodine was really low. Dosed it up some and the stylo is 100% back.

I had one done in September, everything came back fine. It started right around that time.

Cnidoblast · Feb 5, 2018

Zoa spiders pehaps? could try running the tank with other softies like GSP for a while to see if it's water toxin or spiders

zuri · Feb 5, 2018

So multiple things here have me curious here. The first would be was any of the fish you removed a wrasse or mandarin? Also putting them in a sterile tank would be a bad idea for recovery need a stable, nutrient(dirty), dim lit medium flow tank for that. Second thing how long have you had this mushroom colony as you say it's big.

Two things I would experiment with here one I would add a wrasse back to the tank to take care of the pod problem. You have to ask why is there is an explosion here what have they been consuming to breed out of control. The second thing I would look into is coral warfare not uncommon for a colony of mushrooms to have a strong punch to new incomers are you running activated carbon how often do you water change and what's the ratio.
This is just what I gather from what you have told us.

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 5, 2018

Cnidoblast said:
Zoa spiders pehaps? could try running the tank with other softies like GSP for a while to see if it's water toxin or spiders

If it was a toxin, wouldn't effect other corals?

Cnidoblast · Feb 5, 2018

Depends on what toxins - Gsp might be a nice way of finding out if there is a toxin at play - also worth upping your carbon

GSP is real cheap so it's worth getting a small chunk

Breakthecycle2 · Feb 5, 2018

zuri said:
So multiple things here have me curious here. The first would be was any of the fish you removed a wrasse or mandarin? Also putting them in a sterile tank would be a bad idea for recovery need a stable, nutrient(dirty), dim lit medium flow tank for that. Second thing how long have you had this mushroom colony as you say it's big.

Two things I would experiment with here one I would add a wrasse back to the tank to take care of the pod problem. You have to ask why is there is an explosion here what have they been consuming to breed out of control. The second thing I would look into is coral warfare not uncommon for a colony of mushrooms to have a strong punch to new incomers are you running activated carbon how often do you water change and what's the ratio.
This is just what I gather from what you have told us.

I have a tank full of wrasses. Leopards and fairy's. Didn't even put a dent in it. The only carbon I use is ROWAPHOS and I just turned that off and Im using a cheato reactor now. The mushrooms aren't a colony. I have approx 54 spread out in the tank. I have a 250 gallon tank.