Bugs ate my Zoas

[ZoaSue]

Hello, new to saltwater after 20 years away. I have more patience now, and want to do things correctly. I had a small zoa fragment that was beautiful. The rock was completely covered. Then, one day when I forgot to turn on the light, I saw bugs on the closed-up zoas. After some research, I did a freshwater dip. The zoas came back, were still beautiful. The bugs increased, did another dip. The zoa started to die. I now have a nearly-bare rock with some blue patches where polyps were, and one brownish polyp on one side. Have no idea if I should give up, or if it can come back. I am incredibly sad- I had a zoa 20 years ago that never opened, and died.
Still have these bugs. They are tiny, do not look like nudibranches based on image research and viewing under a magnifying glass. They look like little shrimp-bugs. The polyps they were on were closed, did not open. They do not like the lights.
I followed the instructions I found for the freshwater dip, and then for melafix. The zoa started to disappear shortly after- like ice melting. Researching dips, I found CoralRevive, which doesn't treat pests(?) as I understand it. I also found instructions for a dip with Beyer, but the bottle recommended is for mites and things outside. I am not comfortable using it on a living animal.
Is it reasonable to combat the bugs in the future with a fish like the pink streak wrasse, rather than with dips? I'd rather find a natural predator. It's a 20 gallon peninsula-style nano tank. It already has: 1 damsel (yellow), a cleaner shrimp, an anemone, three snails, a stomatella snail, a feather duster and five or so hermit crabs. The zoa is on the highest rock. Ph is 8.2, ammonia is low, nitrates are low, nitrites are low. I turned the heater down, the temp is 72 degrees currently. What can I adjust for the zoa or for future coral? What fish or animal can I get to eat the bugs?
Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Need pictures to identify said bugs

 

[Airedale.Reef]

A picture would be nice, but based on the description the first thing that came to my mind when I read bugs, and zoa, were Zoa eating nudibranches.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

A picture would be nice, but based on the description the first thing that came to my mind when I read bugs, and zoa, were Zoa eating nudibranches.

Yeah but OP said they looked like shrimp

 

[Reefing_addiction]

ammonia Should be 0
Nitrites should be 0
Nitrates - these should be detachable unless you want to run an ulns system
Phosphates should be .03 or higher or lower but still detectable

 

[VintageReefer]

It’s crazy someone is keeping a reef and coral and doesn’t recognize pods

 

[Reefing_addiction]

For optimum conditions a reef aquarium should be maintained at a stable water temperature in the range of 24-28°C / 76-82°F (the stability of the temperature being more important than the exact value).

 

[Reefing_addiction]

It’s crazy someone is keeping a reef and coral and doesn’t recognize pods

The question i have is what type of pods

 

[VintageReefer]

Did it look like either of these

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Look up
Copepods
Amphipods
Isopods

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Did it look like either of these

See I was gonna make them do their homework!

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Did it look like either of these

Did you read the tank parameters

 

[VintageReefer]

Did you read the tank parameters

They really didn’t give any :/
“Low” tells me it’s a color range kit that doesn’t give actual values. Regardless. I believe the OP. Despite what other people say, there are:

1) amphipods that eat zoa colonies, there is a recent thread about it with many people having experienced it (I never have, but I wont deny or invalidate what other people report )

2) certain species of asterina starfish eat zoanthids. Those little white starfish, well there’s over 15 species of them and some eat zoanthids. Happened to me
Before




After

notice the star on the back right. He was eating them at night. Healthy polyps would look irritated the next day and diminish into mush then vanish. I removed him. It kept happening. Lifted the plug, found 3 more starfish. Looked under the shelf, found 2 more starfish. They GRAVITATED to this healthy tank grown colony of 25+ exosphere’s. Reduced it to 7 or 8 polyps by the time I figured it out. Dips didn’t help, they weren’t on it in day time when I dipped.

I removed them from the system and carefully checked day and night and removed any I found. Then got an isolation box. And guess what. Polyps went from consistently vanishing to opening fully and new ones growing. I’m back up to 10 now


So yea when people say pods eating zoa, starfish eating zoa, I believe it

 

[VintageReefer]

Look what they reduced me down to. These pics were about 2 weeks apart. First time I saw them in pic 1 I blew it off. Never even thought they were causing harm.

Then 2 weeks later I know it’s them and j have almost nothing left and find 5 of them on and around the plug

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Look what they reduced me down to. These pics were about 2 weeks apart. First time I saw them in pic 1 I blew it off. Never even thought they were causing harm.

Then 2 weeks later I know it’s them and j have almost nothing left and find 5 of them on and around the plug

100% agree that anything is possible which was why I wanted photos of the culprits!

 

[Cthulukelele]

100% agree that anything is possible which was why I wanted photos of the culprits!

Possible IMO doesn't make it probable. If someone who's new to reefing again after 20 years is describing pulling and dipping a coral colony aggressively and discussing manually turning on their lights each day there are several dozen more likely things that have happened to kill their zoas than it being zoa devouring bugs that match the description of our most common tank scavengers. Even when people talk about zoa eating amphipods they're usually talking about amphipods eating the skirts of their zoas.

 

[Cthulukelele]

A picture of the bugs, your tank, and the zoas as well as a description of your tank equipment/size would help a lot in our ability to know what happened/how to help

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Possible IMO doesn't make it probable. If someone who's new to reefing again after 20 years is describing pulling and dipping a coral colony aggressively and discussing manually turning on their lights each day there are several dozen more likely things that have happened to kill their zoas than it being zoa devouring bugs that match the description of our most common tank scavengers. Even when people talk about zoa eating amphipods they're usually talking about amphipods eating the skirts of their zoas.

Yeah and people tried to tell me it wasn’t probably that I had fireworms in a new tank but i did and still do 4.5 years later soooo

 

[VintageReefer]

Possible IMO doesn't make it probable

You may not mean it this way, but this can come across over text as condescending because you are dismissing what they are reporting and invalidating them without gathering details first

pulling and dipping a coral colony aggressively and discussing manually turning on their lights each day there are several dozen more likely things that have happened to kill their zoas than it being zoa devouring bugs that match the description of our most common tank scavengers.

They said it’s a small zoa fragment rock. I don’t see any reason to call what they did “aggressive”. They did a fw dip and a melafix dip, both are gentle. The bayer dip is more aggressive and OP states they want to avoid that. They are trying to not do aggressive dips

They forgot to turn their lights on ONE day and noticed the pods. I turn my lights on and off each day for multiple tanks including my 75g lps reef. Why criticize that?

A dozen other things - yet nothing is suggested

Your second post asking for pictures is more helpful but the first one rubs me the wrong way and just comes off as dismissive.

Let’s all try to be positive here, open minded, and helpful. Too many times I see a new member get treated like this and then they never return, and don’t get any help

 

[Cthulukelele]

You may not mean it this way, but this can come across over text as condescending because you are dismissing what they are reporting and invalidating them without gathering details first



They said it’s a small zoa fragment rock. I don’t see any reason to call what they did “aggressive”. They did a fw dip and a melafix dip, both are gentle. The bayer dip is more aggressive and OP states they want to avoid that. They are trying to not do aggressive dips

They forgot to turn their lights on ONE day and noticed the pods. I turn my lights on and off each day for multiple tanks including my 75g lps reef. Why criticize that?

A dozen other things - yet nothing is suggested

Your second post asking for pictures is more helpful but the first one rubs me the wrong way and just comes off as dismissive.

Let’s all try to be positive here, open minded, and helpful. Too many times I see a new member get treated like this and then they never return, and don’t get any help

This is fair and it's not my intention.

When I say a dozen other things:

-Lighting issues (not enough or too much PAR)
-loss of zoas to acclimation
-new reefer overlooking something that would be much more apparent visually in images (little to no flow, placement)
-irritation with dips after already being unhealthy
-honestly I'd be more wary of most of the creepy crawlies the poster ISN'T seeing

There are more, and I imagine you'd agree these are more common causes of problems with zoas than pods usually. I think I react in these situations to the idea that I should be helping the poster with their stated issue when logically we'd be helping them with an issue that more than 9/10 times isn't caused by what they're trying to fix.

You could argue that's dismissive, and I agree that what's posted is likely possible, but if someone were giving me information about an issue and didn't think my interpretation of a situation was likely, I'd personally want them to tell me and describe why instead of trying to solve my described issue. I should have spent more energy on the why and for that I agree I could have chosen better words.