I came home Wednesday after a two-day absence to find a number of my brown zoanthids closed and covered in a clear-to-brownish jelly substance. I didn't think too much of it then; I figured they were rebuilding slime coats or something and would be normal soon. However, today several polyps were clearly dead, and the brown slime had spread to another colony.
I went into emergency surgery, excising probably forty polyps in total from the two infected colonies and changing as much water as I possibly could. If this is the sort of fungus I've read about here, I may lose the rest of my zoos over the next several weeks. The pico tank they're currently in (a 3-gallon Tom's Pico) is my only tank, so I've got no possibility of a quarantine or hospital tank. I'm just going to keep changing the water as often as possible, and I'll be liberal with the knife, hoping that by rapid excision of infected polyps, and, if necessary, colonies, I can keep the fungus (or whatever it is) from returning.
My other corals, some mushrooms, xenia, and palythoa seem entirely unaffected, as do four other colonies of zoas I have in the tank. Curiously, it's only two zoanthid colonies that have grown the most in the last few months (one has gone from about 10 polyps to more than 100, and the other went from about 6 to around 80) that have been hurt.
I'll try to get some photos over the next few days.
When I manage to start a larger tank, I'm going to quarantine like crazy. I'm almost glad this happened now, when 3 gallons is as much as I can possibly ruin.
I went into emergency surgery, excising probably forty polyps in total from the two infected colonies and changing as much water as I possibly could. If this is the sort of fungus I've read about here, I may lose the rest of my zoos over the next several weeks. The pico tank they're currently in (a 3-gallon Tom's Pico) is my only tank, so I've got no possibility of a quarantine or hospital tank. I'm just going to keep changing the water as often as possible, and I'll be liberal with the knife, hoping that by rapid excision of infected polyps, and, if necessary, colonies, I can keep the fungus (or whatever it is) from returning.
My other corals, some mushrooms, xenia, and palythoa seem entirely unaffected, as do four other colonies of zoas I have in the tank. Curiously, it's only two zoanthid colonies that have grown the most in the last few months (one has gone from about 10 polyps to more than 100, and the other went from about 6 to around 80) that have been hurt.
I'll try to get some photos over the next few days.
When I manage to start a larger tank, I'm going to quarantine like crazy. I'm almost glad this happened now, when 3 gallons is as much as I can possibly ruin.
