Can't figure this one out.

[mess7777]

I have several types of zoas growing on my center "island" in my 90g reef. Most of them are contained on frag plugs, with a whole lot of eagle eyes growing right on the rock itself. Here is a pic for reference.

I had a few common ugly green palys growing on the rock as well which I found hideous. About 2 weeks ago I decided to go all surgeon on them and cut em out!

Now I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but now all of the eagle eyes attached to the rocks look withered and the red outer part appears darker red to blotches of black as well. They don't seem to be dying....yet....but here is the weirder part. All of the zoas on frag plugs are doing great, including one with eagle eyes!! These ones are perfectly normal red, open up fully and look find. The only exception is a frag of darth maul zoas with about 15 heads that just don't look as good as usual.

I went through a huge loss of zoas on this rock after adding an ATS about 9 months ago. Since then they bounced back and are looking great. In that case they were detaching from the rock so different behavior.

Elsewhere in the tank, my SPS are not showing much PE during the day, but are still growing fine....which also may or may not be related. The SPS do open their polyps up at night though, the zoas are closed up when the lights are out.

Water Paramters :

Alk - 8.1, Calc 420ppm , dosing 2 part
Nitrates - 0 for months
Salinity - 1.025
Temp - 79
Phos - .03 , has been pretty stable for about 2 weeks, before that was closer to .1...some fluctuation here for sure.


Can zoas starve? I feed oyster eggs on occasion, that would be the smallest particles I feed to the tank. These are the oldest zoas in the tank, so I guess one could argue that they have had the longest time without food?

FYI on my lighting, these zoas are receiving a max of 100 par at the top of the rock, and down to almost nothing near the bottom.

 

[Joshporksandwic]

I ripped about 100 pink and gold from my tank and some of the juices from them fell on the surrounding zoas and some melted and others looked really bad for about a month or so. Second time I turned everything off and used a baster to suck any juices around where I removed more pink and golds and nothing was bothered. Zoas do starve. Ask people with SPS tanks that keep water super clean and can't keep most zoos.

 

[mess7777]

hmmm interesting. That would make sense if only the zoas near the ones i cut were affected....but this is pretty much one type of zoas attached to one piece of rock. Makes me think it's the rock...but why now after almost 2 years.

 

[650-IS350]

palytoxin... even chalices, favias or other corals that fall on a colony of zoanthids will lose.

 

[mess7777]

palytoxin... even chalices, favias or other corals that fall on a colony of zoanthids will lose.

that does nothing to explain why only 1 type of zoas is dying. The killed zoas were at the bottom of the "V" in the middle rock. If it was only the ones around it I would understand. Instead it's the zoas all over the rock up to the talk...but not anything on a frag plug.

Is it possible something weird happened to this rock? I do have a couple mushrooms growing on this rock as well that seem unaffected.

 

[650-IS350]

Shrooms are very potent too. Ever think of chemical war fare happening?

 

[mess7777]

not really, wouldn't the zoas close to the shrooms be more likely to wither than the ones that are the furthest?

 

[eg8r210]

When you said you cut them all out, did you remove the rock from the tank or cut them off while leaving the rock in place? Did you turn off all the power heads? If you cut in the tank and left powerheads on then the toxins could have easily been spread throughout the tank affecting those polyps further away.

 

[mess7777]

The flow was off at the time. I did have a good scalpal so I didn't leave many guts behind. I scraped about 6-8 heads straight off the big middle rock. Maybe they injected palytoxin into the rock and so only those seperated by a frag plug can survive

 

[mess7777]

Just a little update here. Strangely my darth mauls looked OK yesterday. They seem to be smaller now compared to before, less stretched out and more intense looking.

Some of the eagle eyes look like this as well, others still are droopy blackish looking things.

I tested my phosphates with the Hanna Checker and got 0.00. I did it twice to be sure. This is the first time in 2 years of having my tank that I have kept consistently low phosphates over and extended period of time.

Could it be that these older zoas are learning to adjust to new parameters of a cleaner tank? Some zoas tend to like dirtier water, so maybe having stable alk and Ca, coupled with almost no nitrates and phosphates have led to this condition?

 

[650-IS350]

Not dirty necessarily but more nutrients.

 

[mess7777]

In order to try and help solve this, I have taken some pictures. In the pictures, the discoloration is clear, and it looks like they have a fungus or some sort of while film...no idea though. 2nd pictures shows the same zoas just on a frag plug that seem fine. You can see the eagle eyes, darth mauls...and pink ones look horrible...but the green ones in the first picture out of focus are perfectly happy. My parameters are still in check...no idea what to make of this. Getting the rock out of the tank for treatment is impossible to be sure without removing a whole lot of other rocks too....just not feasible.

I have been blowing them off with a baster a couple times but don't see any visible pests.

Here are the nasty looking ones

And these ones seem alright

 

[SushiGirl]

that does nothing to explain why only 1 type of zoas is dying.

It does if that kind is more sensitive to the toxin. Did you run any carbon after?

 

[mess7777]

Yes I did change out my carbon the next day.

The sad thing is those friggin ugly green palys are coming back already.

 

[mess7777]

MUCHOS REEF? Or anyone else care to chime in with their opinions after viewing the picture. As you can see the red color is very dark to black and there is an opaque whitish film over the mouths in the middle.

 

[mess7777]

well it is definitely getting worse. I don't know what I can do. I did a dip on a couple of the frags I can get out. These ones are mostly staying closed maybe that is a good thing.

Since I can't really get that rock out I probably don't have much choice but to watch the ones I can't get out waste away while trying to save the ones I can with a periodic dip...hopefully they can outlast the ones I can't remove. New colonies are being affected now so whatever it is can get to the others as well.

I hate when the tank has problems like this...and especially out of nowhere.

The only possible pest I found while doing dips was 1 very tiny little red dot....but with 1 on a whole colony this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

 

[mess7777]

Some of the frags I have dipped are looking better. The rest continue to shrivel up, blacken and dissapear. Good news is that it seems I will save some at least. Honestly at this point, I just hope the others die soon as I can't handle looking at it anymore....it takes away from the enjoyment of the tank. I wish I could get that rock out to dip the whole blasted thing.

 

[650-IS350]

sorry to hear bud.

 

[Joleyar87]

I would def run carbon, sounds like some kidn of toxin in the water!