somethin keeps eating all my zoo's!! help

[benya29]

i just starting getting more and mopre addicted to zoo's but the every piece ive put in recently has completely melted or been eating i don't know wich one i had just bought a $160 colony of blue zoo's they were so nice and it wasnt a frag is was a big piece. i got it yesterday and today it looks melted there are 2 polyps lets after having over 50+

i dont know what could be eating them?

i have alot of hermits and shrimps. also maybe snails? i have turbo and turban snails and also some nassarius snails

do you have any ideas i cant take this ive lost over 600 dollars in zoo's in the past fe weeks...all my rare polyps are gone

please help

 

[dc_909]

Pics? Any shrimp? Have you looked for nudis? What about water params?

 

[levon15]

Sounds aweful fats to be nudi's I had them a couple of months back and they seem to eat them slower than the overnight instance you describe. I would check water params and test the water with less expensive frags before dropping the cash to watch something "melt"

 

[Ding2daDong]

"maybe snails?'

What are you parameters? salinity, alk, cal, po4, no3, no2...

Whats your temp in the tank, does it fluctuate alot? What shrimp exactly, maybe nudis, lighting? How old is the tank? What kind of flow, refugium? skimmer?

You need to give us ALOT more information so we can better help you out.

A good rule of thumb, if you buy expensive zoanthids and they all die in your tank... STOP buying expensive/rare zoanthids till you figure out exactly why they died.

-Matthew

Oh, a picture is worth a thousand words.

 

[scoutmaniak]

Have any angelfish? Some wrasses will eat them too. I would be on the look for a nudibranch though...

 

[650-IS350]

Controversial but wait till all the lights have been off for at least an hour then with a red light or flashlight w/red lense on it... view the zoos with these.... you will probly see TONS of rather large AMPIPODS chewing on them.....

some people say these bugs are just eating the dead and dacaying, but I say no because I lost more then SEVERAL new healthy colonies to large ampipod swarms... and just spoke to another frag farmer who is now having problems with this...

if you don't believe me. search this site for this issue

 

[PacificBlueReef]

^^ Same thing here!!

 

[wakeupdrowzy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9582328#post9582328 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by delsol650
Controversial but wait till all the lights have been off for at least an hour then with a red light or flashlight w/red lense on it... view the zoos with these.... you will probly see TONS of rather large AMPIPODS chewing on them.....

some people say these bugs are just eating the dead and dacaying, but I say no because I lost more then SEVERAL new healthy colonies to large ampipod swarms... and just spoke to another frag farmer who is now having problems with this...

if you don't believe me. search this site for this issue

very interesting, thanx for the info, i had the same thing happen to my zoo, and I have alot of extra large pod. I couldn't figure out why.

 

[650-IS350]

too much extra food and detrius from your tank which is feeding the Large ampipods... once food gets scarces, they go for what they can eat next which are your defenseless zoo's....

which is why I got some guard dogs for my zoos ... namely a 6line wrasse and a mandarin... after a month of having this tag team... i have significantly notice a big erradication of the larger ampipod species..

 

[aquarius77]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9644338#post9644338 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by delsol650
too much extra food and detrius from your tank which is feeding the Large ampipods... once food gets scarces, they go for what they can eat next which are your defenseless zoo's....

which is why I got some guard dogs for my zoos ... namely a 6line wrasse and a mandarin... after a month of having this tag team... i have significantly notice a big erradication of the larger ampipod species..

I agree 100% on this. My sixline has eliminated those suckers and my zoos flourish.

 

[cutnup]

does anyone have a pic of this large amphipod

 

[aquarius77]

From melevs site:

 

[650-IS350]

There are different species of the large ampipods, each one desimated several colonies that I had.. and for some insane reason they always went after the most brightest and most expensive aswell.....

from what I've read the silver ones with stripes have been talked about more....

 

[cutnup]

i have some big amphipods in my system but they look like tiny roaches and you only see thm at night my zoas do fine so i guess i should not worry

 

[Lpabsolute]

Sorry to hear. Do you have any pics?

 

[650-IS350]

No pics of the culprits, but most of them have been erradicated by my guard dogs... MANDARIN, 6LINE, Flasher Wrasse.

I see some still at night but hardly enough, I think now there is just enough of them that they can eat dietrius and film algae with out competion and not turn to eating zoo's