Why are my eagle eye zoas dying? Please help.

[Polypnewbie]

Minor update

Minor update

Thank you everyone for your input and those of you encouraging me.

I understand that there is 100% consensus that water changes should fix the health of my polyps. However, as many water changes as I have done, carefully measuring out my instant ocean salt mix, it has never seemed to improve the health of the polyps once they started this downhill process.

The dosing is the only thing that seems to help. In particular, adding the magnesium and iodine. I have been adding iodine daily since Friday, also testing it daily. The polyps that are left now open up much more fully where before they would only barely open.

It is obvious based on what everyone says the water changes should remove any need for dosing, but it just hasn't worked for me. If I continued hoping water changes would fix things and stopped dosing, I'd be where I was before, with a matter of days left till they died. At least now it seems like a few may make it.

It seems like either my tank has something really odd going on or I just fail to get the basics down with water changes even though I do the basics as best I know how.

I'm sure i will very soon add posts with unforeseen problems. So for all of you who have responded, I really appreciate your input. I know this will be against what everyone wants but: the above mentioned strontium and potassium, maybe it would help if I added those. If possible, I would like to find out how much and what other types supplements may be helpful.

 

[CStrickland]

I'm glad to hear your zoa are perking up! I really thought they would have been too far gone, glad to be wrong

I mentioned strontium as an example of something that our tanks need in such small quantities that it is easier to rely on a good husbandry to balance them than trying to dose. Some others are boron, iodide, iron and even phosphate, plus amino acids and stuff. Since these elements can easily harm your coral if they get too high, you really need to be able to accurately test for them which is expensive. It's not like more is better, you just need enough. Plus, many of the doses you buy from an lfs have other stuff in them and dont give accurate amounts of the element. I think some people with big tanks that never change their water buy straight phosphate from Home Depot but that's way over my head.

Its kind of like how we need vitamins, but it's better to eat a balanced diet than to buy vitamin a,b,c separately and try to live off of pills. If your going to try that kind of scheme I would really research it well first and gain a deep understanding of the biochemistry involved beforehand. I have seen about 4 tanks that successfully manage trace elements, and about a hundred noobs who wrecked their tank by cranking in magic element potion from the lfs without any idea what they were doing. Good luck!

 

[Polypnewbie]

Omg-what next?

Omg-what next?

No sooner did I post my slight progress report this morning than did I make a startling discovery.

This morning I pushed my power head a little further back so it was not pushing water in between the polyps and the lights. This caused the polyps to open even wider and I thought great

Now, just under a few hours later, I see at the front of the aquarium, a multitude of small brown worm like creatures crawling up towards the water level.

How did they just come into being so fast and what are they? Could moving the power head make that big a difference or did I cause this another way? By adding my supplements and improving the water quality did I encourage worms to propagate? Are they harmful? What do I do?

Officially, the way some people are tone deaf: I am tank ignorant. I will never be good at this. I can do no right. I sincerely should change my user name to Polypmoron because at a certain point newbies get the hang of things.

I will attempt to post picture and video of them crawling around

 

[Polypnewbie]

Pictures of worms

Pictures of worms

Here is one picture

 

[Polypnewbie]

i can't get video to attach. Here is one other picture.