Zoa infection?

[impur]

I have a decent sized frag of bam bam oranges. I've had these for 3+ years, they were my first zoas and i grew them from 3 polyps to about 30 i currently have. I have fragged them a couple times as well for trades. Recently, a couple polyps closed up, turned yellow, and melted away. So i removed the colony and using a razor blade removed the other 2 polyps i could see that were turning yellow, severing them from the colony as far into good flesh as i could tell. I then dipped it in a FW w/ TMPCC dip for about 7 min. They opened fine the next day and i did not see any declining polyps until yesterday, there are about 5 turning yellow right now. I've had this problem before, about 2.5 years ago to another type of zoa and it completely melted away. I could not save it, but that frag was new. This one has been in my tank for awhile.

That said, has anyone ever beat this when it starts? Anybody know what causes it or what it actually is? Why would it just begin on a 3+ old colony?

You can see 2 of the polyps closed on the left, and 2 at the bottom. These will be completely gone when i get home tonight.

All the rest of my zoos are fine this is only occuring in this colony. All zoos get a FW w/ iodine or TMPCC for 7-10 min prior to going into the tank.

Params

temp 80.1
pH 8.3
SG 35ppt
alk 8.3dKH
calcium 460ppm
ammonia 0ppm
nitrates 0ppm
nitrites 0ppm

 

[reefboy]

might be a parasite causing the prob might want to do a freshwater dip with tmpcc if you havnt already on a up note ive got quite a large colony can get ya another frag bud.

 

[impur]

I did that and still have polyps dissolving. I'm gonna do another cut/dip session tonight and try fragging some good polyps out of the middle of it. Just sucks cuz these grow incredibly slow! In fact they grow so slow that corraline algae grows over the connecting tissue!

 

[impur]

No, none at all. One day polyp closes, next day it turns yellow, next its gone.

 

[impur]

Yes just these ones. I dipped again last night and fragged about 6-8 from the colony. I lost another 3 polyps last night.

 

[Azurel]

I have had this happen myself a few times and lost all the frags....I think it might be an internal bacterial infection. The only way to fix that would be some how get med into the polyp like through their uptake of water.....A few of the larger palys that I have had that did this I cut open and a black slime came out of them that was really foul smelling.....Not sure if it was a by product of the infection or not....Just my experience.

 

[impur]

Interesting. I don't think i want to be doing any surgery on these. lol I'll keep up with my dips and cutting and maybe i'll get ahead of it eventually. If there are enough polyps. I'm going to add a drop of iodine to the good flesh after i make cuts too, donno if that will help but maybe it will kill whatever is traveling thru these zoos.