Zoas....seem to dissappear

[Octoberfest]

Zoas....seem to disappear

For some reason my zoas seem to kind of melt away. I've had problems with Fire and Ice, Cat Eyes, Eagle Eyes, and Radioactive Dragon Eyes. They will look great when I get them in my tank and then after a while they start to seem as though they're thinning out as if the polyps themselves start to get skinny. At the same time the skirts become shorter and shorter until almost gone. The next thing that comes is they just start to disappear. It take several weeks for this to happen.

I've had this happen in several different tanks so I'm thinking it has to be something I'm doing. I'm able to keep LPS and SPS no problem, have a few softies and tons of ricordea.

This has happened in two shallow reef tanks and a corner 54. I'm running good skimmers, metal halide lighting, and one of the tanks has a calcium reactor. I'm about to add a carbon reactor to both tanks as well.

I keep my temp about 79'F, Salinity at 1.025, nitrates are 5ppm or less, calcium around 420, alk at 10, mag at 1350.

So any ideas on this?

 

[MUCHO REEF]

Sorry to hear this but I see this happening more and more everywhere. Have a question for you. Were they all frags?

Mucho Reef

 

[kichimark]

awesome on giving the parameters. They look good. As Mucho asked are they frags? colonies? Many frags with one to a few polyps have a higher tendancy to melt away.

I have had one frag of 5 "didnt even have a name" zoas that died. I am trying to stay away from such small groups. How is the flow? You say you have sps so I am guessing you have good flow but here is another question...are they in the right spot? I mentioned before in another thread that I have some tubbs blue that I placed initially in a low flow area and they started to close up and some even got thinner. I talked to the guy that gave them to me and he had them in high flow so I moved it to high flow and boom...they are open, full and spreading.

You also got metal halides. Are you placing the zoas at the bottom at first? Light shock can be detrimental. I also run carbon (change it once a month) in my tank to neutralize any allelopathy. I feed heavily and right now got 10ppm nitrates so there is still more than enough nutrients for them.

Kichi

 

[Octoberfest]

This has been happening to both frags and colonies, some large that are on bowling ball pieces of live rock with at least 50% coverage.

The flow in this tank is very good but nothing is getting blasted. Its keeping SPS alive and growing very well, coloration is great as well.

I'm not running carbon but I just cleaned out my carbon reactors yesterday and will be hooking them up in the next day or so.

As far as light they came out of a tank with metal halides and now they are under T-5's. The issues I've discussed started when they were under metal halides but they were under the same fixture for a few years (different bulbs obviously). We'll see what happens with the T-5's I guess.

 

[boxer385]

i'm losing zoas they seem to be glazed over?

 

[Drix]

This's been happening to me as well- Lost a frag of african purples and darth mauls this week -.-

I am hopeful something will bounce back however, I've had failry good luck with randomly re-growing what I thought were dead colonies

 

[subdrive1127]

Yes this has been happening to me as well.
OK..Some of the things Ive been doing by asking around.

1. Dosing Vitcmin C
2. keeping magnesium up.

I can't say I havn't lost a polyp since then but seems to help.

 

[gimme?]

I noticed that same problem with my tank. All my parameters are nice, couldn't figure it out. all i did was bring them higher in the tank to get them more light abd kept dosing as normal.

 

[Bmgrocks]

They had mentioned in coral mag, july or aug issue, that its common for wild colonies to do the same.

The "thin themselves out"
and that for a period of time, they experience rapid growth, but all of a sudden, thin themselves out, recede, melt away ect. Perhaps its a cycle that as a hobbiest we wont understand. Maybe a form of Species preservation?

 

[KrazyReef]

It's happening to me right now. I have the same parameters except mag is at 1200 and dkh is at 11. My PH is at 7.9-8.0.

Is 1200 mag too low for zoas? PH is low due to calcium reactor.

 

[reeferx2]

Any possibility of a predator like zoa eating nudibranchs? They are small and like to hide so they often go unnoticed.