Thoughts on Saving Zoas and Paly

[o2manyfish]

Hey Guys,

A week ago Monday I had a topoff failure and pumped Kalk into my 1100g system for 7.5 hours. All the acros died immediately (200+ pcs) and the Montis died in the first week. My LPS I pulled out and put in a friends tank. In my display tank I lost over 90 fish.

Over the past week I have changed 2600+g of water and am changing 5lbs of carbon every 48 hours.

I have/had 1000's of zoas and palys. Lots of them have withered and melted. Some of them are open and looking normal. But I have lots and lots of colonies that are closed up and algae is growing over them.

I reached in today and grabbed at a couple of the colonies, and the polyps are still intact and feel normal.

The tank water is still cloudy, I had tons of soft corals that continued to melt this past week. But yesterday I reached a turning point and the fish that survived came out of hiding.

What can/should I do with the Zoa's and Palys I have? Should I use a brush to clean the algae off, should I leave them alone?

Thanks

Dave B

 

[NanaReefer]

Is the algae actually choking out the zoa's? If not I'd leave em be and combat the algae per usual. Starve it out! Could be too though that some of the zoa's are dying and actually causing the algae growth.
I'd order a ton of Amphipods from Reefs2Go. They are notorious for eating dead/dying zoa tissue.


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[joshporksandwich]

I've had bad experience with adding too much carbon to my tank and the zoas looked very sad. You need lots of blue legs to eat the algae from frags. Cloudy water could be many things. What kind of tests have you done in the water? Did i read right that you have a 1100g system???????? WOW!!!!

 

[o2manyfish]

Yes the system is 1100g and when it crashed it was packed. When I said I lots 200pcs of Acro, I'm not talking about .5" frags, I had basketball sized colonies. I filled 2/3 of a giant trashcan with skeletons of just the acros. So all that tissue from the acros was the first issue.

I managed to remove over 40 dead fish. But there were still another 60 fish throughout the system that the bodies vanished. So there was all that tissue.

Then in terms of softies I had a 4x4x3 sump that was about 80% covered in xenia. Plus in the display tank I had hundred of stalks of xenia. So that tissue has been wasting away this past week.

So 5lbs of carbon is not much in relation to the system volume, and the carbon has been doing a good job of reducing the smell of the water and adding some clarity.

I'm also running ozone and UV.

The algae that is growing on the Zoas is just shaggy brown. Having to do 300-700g water changes day after day I had no choice but to use tap water. So with all the dead tissue in the system and the tap water, brown algae is just over growing everything. I wiped down the glass today and fortunately the algae is soft and wipes off easily, no scrubbing.

Dave B

 

[tuna_bullet]

turkey baster and a tooth brush..... i would start adding hermits and brittle stars to help the clean up.....sorry about the loss i did that in my 300g 10 years ago.....i dose nothing now....good luck that has got to be a mess....:sad:

 

[akitareefer]

I'd try a peroxide dip on the colonies that can be removed. I'd shake off any dead flesh/grime while dipping.

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[Jing_xoxo]

I recently just did a peroxide dip on a zoa similar to your description ( although mine was looking black almost) it cleared it up completely, however my zoa is still closed but intact. It was my first time but I dont know if id suggest it, I took the risk because it was sort of last effort, plus it was only one frag. Im really sorry to hear about the crash your doing a remarkable job keeping your head up !