Zoas under attack from small pods

[AustinE]

So I have seen a lot of people claim that they’ve had larger (1/2” or more) pods which will supposedly consume zoas. Though I’m sure that this may be true, for the past three months I’ve been dealing with another issue regarding some very small pods (less than 3mm), which from the best that I can tell, are not consuming any parts of my zoas, but are certainly harassing them, causing them to remain closed, and eventually resulting in their death.

I have never seen these particular pods anywhere in the tank aside from absolutely swarming my zoas, and at first I thought that these zoas may just be dying off due to my own error, and the pods were simply consuming dead tissue or something, but this doesn’t not seem to be the case as I’ve repeatedly seen them disturb certainly healthy zoas. A good example is the attached image. Within a couple hours of me putting a new and completely healthy single polyp into my tank, this polyp was swarmed by these pods. The polyp only partially opens for a few hours the morning after I dip it and remove the pods, and then it gets overwhelmed again. The image attached (sorry for the awful quality) shows how many of these pods I collect on the average dipping of this SINGLE POLYP.

Are there any other cases of this sort of problem? I have found none. At this point, is my only easy solution probably a wrasse? Thanks!

 

[Daddy-o]

Springer Damsels eat them also

 

[Zacharys22]

I added 9 frags of zoas last week in my tank and I had a feeling that his may be the case but I thought I was crazy thinking the pods were eating the zoas. The pods in my tank are pretty big and the other night when the lights were out I noticed around 7-9 pods eating the zoas on one of the frags. I am now down to 2 polyps from what was a 6 polyp frag. If I can get some pictures of them on the frag tonight I will post it!