Pest help needed - I don't think these are nudis

[briankauf]

Hello zoanthid experts,

I have a few small zoanthid colonies in my 75 gallon. I have not had success getting them to open up over the few months I've had them.

The water parameters are pretty good:

s.g. 1.025
Alk - 7 DkH
Ca - 450
pH -8.1
temp - 78
Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, all undetectable
PO4 - undetectable


Upon close inspection with a microscope, I see tiny white "bugs" on the colonies. They are too small for me to be able to determine much of their shape.

As a first step, I ran Flatworm exit in my aquarium then used a turkey baster to clean the colonies.

After a couple days I still see the bugs.

My next treatment was a 2 minute dip in RO/DI water with Iodine and flatworm exit then vigorous shaking. This was yesterday.

Today, upon examination, I still see the little white bugs moving about on the zoas.

Any idea what these might be? I've been reading up on zoanthid pests, but these don't look like the nudibranchs, starfish and snails I see most often mentioned. Any ideas?

I am sorry I don't have a picture, but I don't have a camera with a powerful enough macro to show these.

Thanks!!

Brian

 

[mfinn]

First if they have not opened in months, I don't think they are going to make it.

Second, it sounds like the bugs might just be copepods.

 

[briankauf]

I would think the same, if they were receding or shrinking, but they don't seem to be...

If it's just copepods, is this something I should try to control, or is something else bothering the zoas and they are just a red herring?

 

[mfinn]

copepods really don't bother zoanthids. Some amphipods do, but they are much larger.
Maybe try a little more flow in the area, water change, make sure a fish isn't picking on them.

 

[briankauf]

Great, I'll try moving them a bit.

 

[briankauf]

The zoas are now recovering and opening up more and more each day. I did the flatworm exit treatment and did a couple of freshwater+iodine drips. This helped temporarily. I also added a green Coris wrasse. Finally, I turned off the white daylight lamps and moved all the zoas to the lower 1/3rd of the tank. It was not until I did this last step that started to open more than about 25%. I believe that the 4 T5s and 4 PCs must've been a bit too much light for them (which is somewhat surprising, since at least half had been under halides before I bought them).

I hope this helps other folks with their zoas

 

[briankauf]

By the way, I know it was terrible science to change so many parameters, but whatcha gonna do (my wife actually defended her thesis in Organic Chem as I was doing this, so she must've been too busy to yell at my bad lab techniques ;-))