Fungus confirmation?

[eshook]

I believe my Zoas have a fungus growing between the polyps. When the polyps are extended you can barely see them. If not, then it looks like the picture below. Can I have a confirmation that this is a fungus. If so, do I pull the Zoas out of the water pick off the pieces and put them back in the water?

Thanks for any advice!

 

[DaveJ]

Looks more like a sponge than a fungus. FW dip with FuranII will help it in either case.

 

[ct_vol]

I agree... Looks like a sponge... Is it irritating them??? I usually don't have problems with sponges bothering my zoas/palys...

 

[eshook]

I don't think the sponge/entity is bothering them, but its hard for me to tell. These are my first corals I have been moving my rockwork around quite a bit, but when I leave them alone it seems all the polyps are extending, but it also seems that the entity is growing at a rapid pace. If it begins to bother them, what would you recommend as a course of action?

 

[650-IS350]

Get pinchers and pluck the sponge off.. or in worst case scenario just frag off the good polyps and move them somewhere else.. so if the infested frag dies , you still have another frag ready...

 

[eshook]

Update:

I pulled the frag out of the water and plucked off some of the sponge. I assumed I could just grab a piece of it and pull most of it off the frag, but that is not the case. I had to pull each and every little piece off. So I might have removed approximately 50% of the mass. We'll see what happens.

 

[AMGSiR]

I picked up a rock from my LFS full of zoo's and it had something similar on it.

A few nights and my army of hermits seems to have cleaned the rock up completely.

I didn't even realize i had so many! but they sure come out of the woodwork when you drop something new in the tank!

 

[eshook]

I purchased a few more snails and hermits. And just as AMGSir said, once they were comfortable in their surrounding the crabs simply ate the sponge tissue around the corals. The past few days the zoos have been a bit agitated, but very soon the sponges should be all but gone.

A nice environmentally friendly approach.