Zoa/Paly homicide?

[shovelrider]

I have had a couple frags with about 15 polyps starting to wither away. Its been a couple weeks and they have been closed the whole time. I have slightly elevated phos right now for some reason. The question is... at night I see some king of pod rally on these frags and it looks like they are munchin' on them. Could this be a cause or is this a result of them dying?

[video=youtube;q8u2McCaS5U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8u2McCaS5U&feature=youtu.be[/video]


Are these good or bad? What type of pod?

 

[bct15]

Those pods look like normal pods not sure on exact species but one of the types that people buy online I think tiger pods or something like that. If you really have to many look at getting a yellow coris wrasse or hoevens wrasse (if you have a 2 inch or deeper sand bed or can add a container with at least two inches of sand and big enough for the fish to hide in) or if you have way to many and can support it full term a mandarin.

As far as them eating you zoas, this is a rather debated topic. From what I have experienced they will start to pick at fatally wounded or dieing zoas, particularly the ones that turn sort of clear and are melting and the ones that are sloughing off the rock. They also hang around closed polyps at night and eat all of the crap from between them. I have seen some people claim that when pods get out of control that they will eat healthy Zoa colonies, I can not prove or disprove this claim. Like I said, in my experience, they clean up rocks and frags of zoas but not fast enough to stop whatever is killing the polyp's from spreading through the whole colony.


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[ChrisKey]

Do you have fish in the tank? I went through a fishless period and all my zoa colonies died off. I also had the amphipods on them at night, but it could be due to a lack of nutrition in the tank and they were eating the dying zoas.

 

[shovelrider]

I only have two fish right now. A medium sized clown and a large pajama cardinal. Could this be part of the issue? I also have a very large skimmer for my tank and bio-load, should I try a period of no skimming?
The skimmer is a few weeks old (it is broke in) and is only pulling out lightly discolored water like there is not much to skim.

Tank: 45g with 10g sump
Fish : clown and cardinal
Skimmer: sca-302 rated for 180g by manufacturer and at 90g(stocked well) by reefers that have them.

 

[Greenpj22]

I had that skimmer for a while... its an awesome skimmer for the money. I was having to empty the collection cup every 3 days because it is tiny!

 

[aslmx]

Id put a red scooter blenny in there. Hed have a field day with them. Plus its a cheap but very cool fish that you can get at petco for around $8. I have some kedd redds that close up alot. Ive been told its a cleaning thing they do but who knows.