Zoa Mucus Coat

[ArowanaLover1902]

So my dragonhead zoa has been making this weird slimy coat, it's pretty dense and is focused on his base. It is well connected and only falls apart when I move it, but it's pretty unattractive. I've tried everything I know to fix it:
- it was in a low flow place next to a duncan coral about 3 inches away, but I thought maybe there's some sweeper tentacles or something)
- I moved to it to a medium flow place by itself
- I changed out it's filter
The tanks has LPS, Zoas, and softies and none of them have this, I even treated the coral when I first got it two week ago.

 

[29bonsaireef]

Could be from asterina stars.

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

What do you mean?

 

[29bonsaireef]

Asterina starfish, They're small white/tan starfish, and will feed on zoas. The zoas build up a mucus from where the star fish is feeding and will eventually cover them. Always could be something else, but I would check close for them. Harlequin shrimp work amazingly well at eating and removing asterinas.

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

I dipped the coral just the other week. I have a ton of other zoas and none of them show any signs like this. Could it be a stress thing? I couldn't do a harlequin as it would be destroyed by my pistol shrimp. I will check closer for the stars though. Would the slime coat kill them?

 

[29bonsaireef]

Asterinas are probably one of the most common pests in reef tanks and may have already been in your system. Could be from stress but usually slime coat is caused by pests, infection, etc... If it is indeed caused by aterinas and you can get them out the zoas should recover fine.

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

Here are some pics, that hole is pretty strange, I just got this shipment in 2 weeks ago, two of the other zoas have pretty much closed up and died (but I'm still giving them a chance to recover) and I just looked and one had a similar looking bite/removed chunk. Could it be my peppermint shrimp or a flatworm? If all those white specs are starfish I'll need a harlequin.

 

[wattson]

its a fungus that shows it self directly when the polyps just blow/waste away in the flow from being damaged some how,,best to remove colony in separate container with saltwater and scrape gently away all the rotten tissue with tweezers,,then give a good Iodine dip for 15 minutes,,,follow the directions on the iodine bottle for dipping procedures,,the iodine dip may have to be repeated 2-3 time in a separate container with saltwater from the tank it came from.
asterina star fish did not cause this problem,,the polyps were damaged some how by a direct impact or abrasion..

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

I saw my pistol shrimp pinch a polyp one time when I first put them in the tank, maybe that's what this is. I hate it when my pets get sick. Thanks so much for identifying it so quick, I really appreciate it. Now to go to work on it. I'm going to check the other sick looking zoas for the same thing.

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

The surgery:
- I put all (4 zoas) the questionable corals in a little tuperware of my tank's water.
- I got a tweezer and scraped off the fungus from the coral in the picture, pieces of zoa just kinda fell off, but most of the colony was secure
- The next coral literally just kinda fell apart when I touched it, there was no saving it
- The other two corals weren't infected, they did have a little cyano over their heads though, I took that off by lightly rubbing my finger on the head of the polyp
- I dipped the four corals for 15 minutes, rinsed them in freshwater, put them in saltwater from my aquarium, let them sit for 5 minutes, then moved them back to the tank, I will repeat this tonight if they still shows fungal signs.
Thanks for all the help