Chasing zoa pox around the tank

[heckeng]

Ok, quite an annoying thread to start but I recently picked up a great looking colony of Pinwheel zoas from a LFS. I had never known what zoa pox was nor knew what they looked like etc. Whelp, the colony had them and after researching, I found the treatment etc. I do not have a quaranteen tank either by the way. I successfully eliminated them from that colony, but over the last several months have been chasing random zoa pox popping up on my other zoas. This is a predominantly Zoa tank and while I have been what I would consider very successful with my treatments and have not lost any varieties of zoas completely, I believe the bacterial infections spread via the water column so who knows where/when it will pop up next. I have quite a few frags of very nice zoas and REALLLY don't want to lose them. I have dug out a UV filter and put it on the tank in hopes that it may help, but wanted to see if anybody else has had this happen and if so if they have had any success in eliminating the problem.

In addition to the UV, I have added some Koralias to get a little more flow around the tank.

The tank is a 90 standard, lighting is 3 AI Sols, filtration consists of a 30 gallon sump with a SRO 1000int skimmer, a Reef Octopus bio pellet reactor running about 1/2 the recommended usage of pellets, and live rock with a 1" sand bed for aesthetics.

I wish somebody could tell me why this bacteria attacks zoas

 

[Potsy]

I'd like to know the causes too. I've it fought in the past. I'm surprised no one has yet viewed a sample under a microscope.

 

[saltwatercoral]

provin remidy, take a small container of your tank water, than put as many frags as u feel comfortable with, then ad dropers of paroxide. add drops until you see the water start to foam, stop and let this take place for about 10-30 ninutes. while this is happening, get another container of fresh tank water and rince. then you can move to the next group of zoas. people have said it also removed there alge. after this, i recomend adding alot of snails

 

[Conrad25]

Your just talking hydrogen peroxide? normal store brown bottle stuff? Sounds interesting and I would give it a try next time I would see this happening as I have had it happen a couple of times on me.....

 

[~RuSh~]

Be careful with peroxide. It can be very potent and can certainly kill zoas as fast as it can kill algae. I can't comment on it's effectiveness in treating pox. I used Furan 2 and was successful with that treatment


I went through a similar bout with zoa pox. I didn't know what it was either until it wiped out one of my frags and was well on it's way to wiping out several more. I had (luckily) a 10g tank set up and cycled so as I dipped them I put them in the 10g instead of back into the 29g. This way I could keep the infected frags seperate from the healthy frags. Any frags in question stayed in the 10g. It was a huge pain and over three treatments of Furan 2 (all different frags) it took me over a month to rid my tanks of it. But I did it and only lost two varieties. I thought myself pretty successful considering how quickly the first colony went down.

That would be my recommendation to you as well. If you can, set up a 10g HOB filter and the best lights you can spare - my 10g only had a 20 inch 18w T5, but it saved me in a pinch. This will prevent the merry-go-round of zoa pox and hopefully you can kick the pox forever.

 

[650-IS350]

Best way is to treat " ALL " zoas with furan2... have a separate quarantine tank.. But if you don't, then you would have to weekly dip all frags/colonies in Furan in accordance to the furan2 treatment guide for zoanthids.. carefully ensure all frags/colonies dipped are rinsed prior to adding back into tank to ensure you don't have a lot of furan residue getting into your main tank