Zoa's dissapearing!

giambi4343

giambi4343

New member
i have had multiple zoa frags just wiped out over the past 4 months. the majority of them were wiped out in a week that i was away. the day i left they were healthy and happy and as soon as i came back, they were bare as bone. but all my paly frags are completely fine. i have tried putting more frags in there and the next day when i get done work (3 pm) they are gone again. i thought over the week i was gone, that something may have happened to the water, but now i see that they are dissapearing over the course of 24 hours. so it has to be something eating it. the only fish that i dont have that are considered "add with caution in a reef" is a golden dwarf eel and a virgate rabbitfish. i feed my fish about 1 or 2 times a day depending on how busy i am. do you think its one of these guys eating them and if so, why do they only eat the zoas and not the palys too?
thanks
andrew
 
Can you take a colony out and dip it in fresh water? Your pest will faall off in the dip and you can ID it. My zoas are being eaten by asterina starfish and zoa eating nudis. I dip them every other day and I think Im making some headway on the problem. I would bet you have nudibranchs. Dip em and find out.
 
can pests take out a perfectly healthy colony/ large frag in less than 24 hours without any trace of leftover flesh? i think it may be the rabbitfish so i caught him tonight and im taking him to my store tomorrow. he is in a salt bucket with an air stone and small heater. he was also getting beaten up by my purple tang, so he had to go anyway in orfer to live. idk why the tang all of the sudden started beating him up but the tang is staying in the tank over the rabbitfish anyday. ill pick up a small frag tomorrow and see if it survives more than 24 hours and if it does, i found my problem!
i would still appreciate any other feedback anybody else has. thank you
andrew
 
I have something that randomly snatches my ricordea, but I'm pretty sure it's a crab. If you don't find that it is the rabbit, check at night for crabs, or a eunicid worm.
 
It's highly unlikely that a a pest such as nudi's would be capable of mowing down a complete colony leaving no trace in a 24hr period.
Any chance that they are somewhere else in the tank? I've had a couple of smaller colonies float off in the current when not secured.
 
Zebodog said:
I had a scribbled rabbitfish that developed a taste for zoa's. He found himself a new home.
Click to expand...

I will second the rabbit fish!!
I went fishing for my scribbled rabbit fish last week. Finally caught him with a line and barbless hook.

He could clear out a colony of zoas in a day.
I had to keep him well fed for he would pig out on them.

He was one of my favorite fish but went through many times his weight in zoas.
 
Those friggin Hairy crabs love Zoos. I had to dal with a huge nasty Hairy Crab at 3am with a red light! Caught him in the action. heh, heh, heh, I got him. I love creatures of all sorts but when they stat nipping at my coral collections I don't put up with it!
Now if I can only find the culprit that keeps killing my Turbos!
 
Dude, This Hairy crab had ate about 1" of zoos. He didn't carry it anywhere he ate it right of my plug. The entire zoo colony dies shortly after.
 
Look up eunicid worm on the web. These come out at night and love zoas. I had the same issue as you did and was able to catch the 4ft(stretched) worm in my 100g 9 months ago.
 
i dont have any peppermint shrimp. i have been looking for any nightstalkers and have come up with nothing. all my palys are ok. is it because they have more toxins than zoas do?

i also got rid of my scribbled rabbit today. he is at my store i work at so i can keep a good eye on him for a while. i picked up some yellow polyps and a few zoa frags to see if it was infact the rabbitfish that was killing my zoas. ill see how the zoas are at around 3 tomorrow..... WISH ME LUCK!
 
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