Zoa Spiders, The battle begins.....

[Snowreefer]

man good luck with the battle. Last thing i could ever imagine wanting to do with my tank is to start throwing out colony's.

Has any research been done on something that will eat them?

Maybe some kind of wrasse? Might be the best solution to find. Since there is no chemical available and picking them off seems to be a neverending battle.

Somebody should setup a tank with some spiders in it and throw in a few carnivores see who goes after them.

 

[Shultz]

Well firstly appologies for anybody mad enough waiting around lastnight for an update... Back was giving me real jip by the time I'd finished dipping & I had to get up early for work so sorry!

Sooooooooo how'd it go you ask??? Well I have to give a little background info first.. A member of the ReefPark forum was giving up his reef tank, he had Zoa's but had been losing them for a while without knowing why. Kudos to Trev in that I offered to take them if nobody wanted them to see what I could save, not only did he give them to me he delivered them from 4 hours away for just some petrol money!!!!

I dipped them on the sunday afternoon & got 2 spiders, so that proved he had the same problem as me After adding them to my QT tank I then thought it might bugger up my spider count lastnight as I now had a lot more Zoas! So this sorta brings you upto date & the dip lastnight.....

Firstly losses, another 2 didn't look good, one from trev & one of my originals so they went to the great Zoa club in the sky. All the rest dipped with a noted few loose polyps indicating to me spiders still active. OK! OK! I'll get to the point... Very pleased to say I found just 5 spiders this week & 4 of those came off the new Trev ones so it finally feels like I'm getting somewhere & worth the effort. The hope is of course to find nothing next week, but I ain't holding my breath yet.

So I hope you enjoyed this update as I've said earlier I think its taken me this long to get things under control because I had so many & the steep learning curve to begin with.

Cheers Shelton.

 

[ct_vol]

This is rediculous... I couldn't believe this thread was still going... Thanks for sharing your findings and keeping us posted... I can't believe the infestation you've had... 64 spiders in two weeks!!!!!!!!!! Do you have a total on all you've killed so far??? That one picture of the night you found 44 is a nightmare come true... I don't think they're that common, so you may want to check if your friend that had given you the other zoas w/spiders and you have had any common dealings with a LFS or a person over there...

 

[Shultz]

Hi,

My m8 & I haven't never swopped Zoa frags in the past & the only common factor woould be the main UK importer of corals etc in TMC as they supply 95% of the marine industry over here....

I think the total number of spiders to date is about 105! But as I said I think mine had got to plague proportions before I realised it was them causing the problem....

I wonder if global warming is a factor in helping these predators breed etc & alot more people around the world could find themselves with this problem? Though I hope I'm wrong....

Cheers Shelton.