Zoa frag rotting

[Snoopdog]

I have zoas doing oustandingly well, they are growing off the frag plugs. Other frag plugs purchased around the same time, two of them are basically rotting. I noticed they were not opening up fully and then when I blew them with a baster they fell apart. What causes this? All other corals are doing great and water params are also perfect.

 

[danschoenherr]

I also have this occur from time to time. The zoa flesh appears kind of whitish and mush also. Post mortum has turned up a white worm, kind of ringed, that was burrowed or living under the zoa. It was a very small diameter, but probably 1.5" long when pulled out with a tweezers. I do remember they have survived CoralRx dips.
Kind of sounds like your problem too. This is not what I would consider melting. It is almost as though it is being eaten or disolved from the inside out over several days and is not saveable. Maybe watch out for this to confirm.

 

[Zoa_Fanatic]

I have zoas doing oustandingly well, they are growing off the frag plugs. Other frag plugs purchased around the same time, two of them are basically rotting. I noticed they were not opening up fully and then when I blew them with a baster they fell apart. What causes this? All other corals are doing great and water params are also perfect.

You can FW dip them and get rid of most parasites. @footgal can prolly help you more

 

[PicassoClown04]

Can you post some pictures? As mentioned earlier, there is a difference between zoas getting destroyed by parasites and zoas melting. Often, there’s not anything you can do after a zoa begins to melt and it probably wasn’t your fault in the first place- some zoas are just melters and it happens to the best of us. If you could post some pics, do a post mortem, or describe in a lot of detail the progression of the zoa’s death that would be very helpful!

My go-to dip is H2O2 just because it’s safe, effective against a lot of baddies, and readily available everywhere for super cheap. It should take care of algae, pests, and infections without causing any harm to the zoa. If you believe this to be a pest, I would conduct a quick dip of all the zoas you can to nip this thing in the bud. You can do a 1:1 H2O2:tank water for 1 minute or 1:10 for 10 minutes, it shouldn’t really make a difference but I feel like the longer it’s allowed to sit in the dip, the more deeply it can penetrate and hopefully kill anything burrowed into the zoa tissue.

Remove any zoas you feel are melted, dead, or beyond saving just to control the spread. If you have a spare tank/bucket and heater, you could leave some zoas in there overnight just to see if they recover after the dip. This is effectively your QT tank just do small water changes and aerate regularly (every 24 hours or less) or put a powerhead in there to cause some surface agitation. Any light should do for a couple days since were only dealing with zoas.

Best of luck to you, I hope you get this figured out!