I must have missed where someone said this doesn't exist and that you are all crazy and seeing things
... Maybe I missed a reply where someone said that you imagined seeing a pod eat a polyp???
I just don't like seeing things hyped to mass hysteria (like how zoas are going to kill you because they are soo toxic if you look at them wrong). What most people will read from this is that pods are bad, so they should be eradicated. Same thing happened with bristle worms in the early days. They provide innumerable benefits in an aquarium, but people were ready to do anything necessary to eradicate them because someone said they found them eating their new clam, etc.
I think that if you read what I wrote, you won't find anything that says this doesn't happen. My question is on the reason this happens. It is not an inevitability that if you have pods, they will eat your zoas. Speaking in absolutes is misinformation (hence the direction of our society at least over the last 6-7 years
). Your explanation above that there are hundreds of different species helps break it out to a more specialized problem, rather than saying pods in general (which is where the misinformation is for the average reader). Now, can we identify which pods in particular are the problem pods? That to me would be the next step to classifying this problem and gaining a better understanding.
delsol, I may come across like I'm arguing with you (not my intention), but the point I'm trying to make is we have to be more responsible for the statements we make (especially as experienced hobbiests). Being more specific in the statements we make will help curb the misinformation that plagues this hobby. Someone hears something from someone and then tells five friends who then tell five friends. The 'palytoxin's gonna kill you if you give it a chance' scare is one that really bugs me. Once again, you can't say it won't happen, but no medically documented accounts can be found on palytoxin from the hobby hurting anyone, despite the tens of thousands of people who frag and have fragged zoas over the last ten or twenty years. There may have been a lot of "well it had to be the palytoxin, despite there being millions of other things that could have caused the issue or combined to cause the issue because it's the easies thing to blame" excuses, but no real documention. Should someone be informed that it is a vastly remote possibility, yes, but they should also be informed that very little is known about how much palytoxin is in each zoa and the only known zoas that have been really tested are Palythoa toxica (not something you see in the hobby). Also, that no one has every actually been diagnosed as having palytoxin poisoning. Not that zoas are toxic and will kill you if you touch them. Or that pods are bad and will eat your corals. We have to be careful how much we group and generalize in our statements. There may be some pods that do this, so specify that maybe it is certain species and most likely not all pods. It can't be the goal of all pods to eat zoas, right? If so, we'd all have the problem, right? There are obviously differences in our setups that make conditions right for pods to eat zoas, so we need to figure out what those differences are to help the hobby. Close ended statements like pods are bad, they'll eat your corals is misleading. That may not be what people are writing (explicitly), but I guarantee you that enough people will pull from this that pods are bad and will cause problems in your tank.
I don't think a tank is complete without a wrasse or a mandarin, so maybe that is why I haven't seen issues. delsol-it sounds like that worked for you, too. Is this the only difference between issues and no issues (no other changes to your system)? What kind of pods did you see eating them (description or pics if available)? Anyone else? If so, I'd recommend a separate thread and get others to post their experiences on both sides of the ball. We may see a characteristic of those who have never had issues or corrected the issue with those who have/are experiencing the issue. That would work towards understanding the issue. I have a weird way of doing it (obviously), but I'm trying to spark conversation to work towards an explanation for the problem.
