Zoa Infection?

[dsinsocal]

I've seen something similar to this on a rock of zoas I received a couple years ago and I was barely able to save a small portion of them -- the rest were overtaken and melted away by whatever it was.

This white goo looks very similar, and it's growing fast. I noticed it about a week ago and I hoped it was just a sponge growing, but it's about twice the size now and I'm starting to freak out. This is my zoa garden... the last thing I want to do is try to cut it all apart trying to save polyps.

Anybody have any ideas? Is it an evil sponge of some type? A bacterial infection? If bacterial, would chemiclean be useful? (I have a few patches of stubborn green cyano that I was going to treat anyway).

 

[wattson]

its a sponge,,do a search on how to kill it..
Maybe a peroxide dip would work outside of the display tank ?
do some research on it .

 

[Capitol Reef Corals]

You can try to remove as much as you can with tweezers. That usually works for me when I find sponges on/near my corals.

 

[Deiblerj]

Are sponges bad? I have a huge one growing under one of my rocks...

 

[JaimeAdams]

No, most of the time sponges are good. In this case it is bad because it is choking out the zoas, but generally sponge growth in a reef tank is a good thing.

 

[dsinsocal]

Thanks.

I experimented with a little aiptasia-x in the blowhole of the sponge, just to see what would happen. After 12 hours it seemed to have a really negative effect on it. It was really shriveled and melty looking. I may try that again in the future if I have a particularly nasty and hard-to-reach sponge in the future.

Afterward, it tweezed off pretty easy, like pulling little pieces of cotton off the rock. Hopefully I don't have to worry about that again for a while. Any type of infection or affliction in a zoa garden is stressful.