mucho my friend, long time no see(talk)! im glad to see somebody i know is still around. been away from the hobby for about a year and im just now coming back lol
Hello my friend, yes, very long time. I agree, about 95 % of the OG's are gone for one reason or another. I miss those guys/gals, we had some great discussions back in the day for sure. Hey glad you're back.
i have noticed many different things living on my corals thru the years. most common for me in the past would be a small pod colony that never did any damage. i have seen some sort of pod munch on zoas that are already hurting or starting to melt away.
Yes, I agree, as I'm sure you already know, numerous host are imported from LFS, the sea and any stop in between. Some good and some bad. Again, I have to agree, there are pods who will munch, though they are in the minority.
i have even had little red bugs the size of a grain of sand destroy colonies i have had for years. we should all know what these are lol
Got a pic of them?
i also believe that most of these pods/bugs we see can not be seen well enough to know what they are or if they would cause an issue. many people i have met thru the years have told me that copepods ate thier zoas..... now do you think it was copepods or something else??
I say it could have been. This is where these forums are so helpful. There are a lot of guys whom I personally know that they know their stuff. I have read their post over the years and we have conversed both in public and private on a host of topics. I am convinced that there is a pod or pods which will indeed consume perfectly healthy polyps.
it all boils down to the fact that unless you have a camera set up 24/7 with a really good lens setup you would never know. i feel that even some of these scientist really have no clue and are just guessing from what they have seen or noticed.
I agree to an extent, however, I have been helped years ago by Dr. Shimek and I hold him in very high regards for his work, his writings and his knowledge. I have learned so much from reading the books and literature written by many well respected heavies in this hobby. The key is to read, digest, cross reference. experiment and apply said knowledge and document it. This is what I do and have done. Yes, there are some who miss the mark, but that's when one can fall back on any personal experience and knowledge in the hobby.
only thing i can gaurantee you is you will forever see something new in your tank thru the years that you never even knew was there. you may never even notice the difference between it and something else you see everyday. so saying for certain that this organism is eating the zoas/palys or any other coral is hard to say. almost everything is a guessing game on these forums and even in the real world
I agree bigtime man. Something new is always there to be seen. Years ago, I discovered the Sea Grass Wrasse hunting/searching and consuming nudibranchs and posted those findings right here in this forum. I purchased several fish on a hunch that one would be the nudi hunter we all wanted to guard our zoanthids. It was through trial and error, for the lack of a better word, that I found him. I couldn't guess if this fish was consuming nudibranchs, I had to prove it. In the end, some who purchased this fish did see him hunt nudis, others didn't. That said, sure there is some guessing, speculation etc, but not all. Hey, we have to trust someone, RIGHT? LOL.
Hope all is well with the tank. I enjoyed the discussion. Hope we can have more. :beer: CHEERS
