dang!! got my first zoa pox

[berns]

dang i didnt wanna see this...
i got 3x zoa colonies from a lfs about 4 weeks ago and when they arrived i dipped and scrutinsed each colony before adding to main tank, nowt to worry about as all looked clean. one of the colonies had about 8 loose polyps still in the bag so i glued a few to 2x cockle shells and placed these in 2 other seperate tanks (prop and frag) to my main reef.

well 4 weeks later the dragon eye colony in main tank is slowly getting poorly and closer inspection is showing the pox everywhere, areas of polyps are growing wat looks like a brown algea like surface film and disintigrating, so its now in a seperate bowl with pump/heater (make shift quarenteen) the 2 frags residing in seperate tanks also have pox so they also in QT bowl.

luckily so far nowt else is showing pox in all tanks so fingers crossed.

so to clarify the day these colonies arrived 4 weeks ago polyps from the dragon eye were put into 3 tanks and 3 weeks later they all show pox, i guess this shows you cant be sure on any zoa's you get from a lfs for at least a month.

ive read the long pox thread on rc and realise theres nowt concrete to do but wait and hope as my colony is small anyway and looks doomed im gonna try something different as i never see any tests regarding lighting on the pox and maybe the pox needs good light to survive, ive nowt to loose and it could be worth a try so im gonna keep them in complete darkness for 3-4 days then open up to a few hours to some natural daylight to gadge their condition before repeating darkness for another similar period etc etc, maybe starving the pox of light might kill it before it kills the zoa's, who knows????

 

[jessiesgrrl]

Man, that does suck. I am so sorry!!!

Laurie

 

[berns]

thx laurie, i hope i got it out of tanks before it has a chance to spread.

read thread coralnutz but still seems hit and miss, in my case the only thing i can be sure at the moment is the dragon eye colony was carrying the infection, the fact that polyps were in 3 seperate tanks with different lighting and with similar yet not exact same water biology means that conditions of each tank didnt have a bearing on stopping the already infected polyps.

my QT bowl is different in that its gonna be in total darkness for periods.

 

[berns]

will do coralnutz, there is a small bunch polyps at one end of the colony without signs of pox so far so i guess they will be the guinea pigs in the black out test.

 

[berns]

more doom and gloom but wats this...

ive been checking other zoa colonies in tank again and ive found a few pox on a zoa rock about 6" away from infested colony, now heres the interesting bit the 2nd rock i found with a few pox has been infected only along the bottom edge that touches the sand that is facing the original infested colony so far. on closer inspection of the pox a few of them really look like a bunch of tiny white eggs so now im thinking something may have migrated from dragon eye and has only just touched the edge of 2nd few pox colony.

ive now just done a 30 minute heavy lugios dip in 70F ro water and used a powerhead to blast both the dragon eye colony and the 2nd (few pox) zoa colony and ive found something on both colonies that ive never seen before...
the beast ive found looks abit like a very small common house woodlice, its about 5-8mm long, 3mm wide and is a white/cream colour with faint lines across (side to side) the segments, 2 small tenticles, there were 2 of these beasts on dragon eye rock and 1 in newly found few pox rock, i also dipped a couple other rocks near by to check for these but have found none.

of course this is all a stab in the dark regarding the reason for my pox and there are reefers that are much more experienced in these things but wat im thinking makes alot of sence to me,

the dragon eye rock came in with the beasties and my earlier not so brutal dips did not kill them and so they continued laying their microscopic eggs, these eggs cannot be seen by naked eye untill they reach certain growth and then briefly can be seen as a bunch of white eggs before hatching and then burrowing into side of polyp to feed.
so having layed their eggs on a colony they then migrate to other zoa colonies to continue there breeding. also not every polyp on the colony of dragon eyes has been infected which more then likely points to a beastie being responsible as it travels through the colony laying eggs it will obviously miss the occasional polyp as it travels through the jungle of stems, where as a bacteria is not so clumsy as it would infest everything in its path so every single polyp would get infected.

so heres the crunch of my theory, why hasnt anybody else noticed these beasties with their dipping?

heres a picture of beasties which i know really is crap and wont help much but if you have a zoa colony with pox then dip again and be brutal and look carefully as these buggers are nearly see through when floating around in water.

 

[berns]

some of the stories ive read where by the pox has spread from colony to colony in a migrating pattern also points to this, a water bourne bacteria would infect all colonies at the same time and not have this domino effect (obviously those reefs with a high population of beasties wouldnt neccessarily see a domino but more like a blitz of them all)

also wat would be interesting to hear is if those that have found zoa colonies with just a few polyps infected, were they infected from the direction of other infected colonies which could point to migration of something.

i guess all this has been thought of before and only the appearence of these beasties will maybe shed some light on my ramblings.

 

[jonbar1]

Look like pods, probably just scavenging on the dead tissue.

Good luck, I've seen so many things tried and the only things I've seen prove effective from what I've read and from my experience with it was daily 10-20% waterchanges and time.

I now mostly avoid small polyped zoas, as it never seemed to bother any of my larger polyped varieties. It almost seems like a cycle every zoa tank goes through.

 

[ficklefins]

Berns,

I started a zoa pox thread here a while ago that Coralnutz linked above. I can try and answer most of your questions but the real cause to this is still unknown. I have a feeling that with your input we can get closer to an answer if you don't mind posting your feed back in this post:

http://www.club-zoa.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57[/QUOTE]

To answer some of your current questions: I belive that the pox is actually a parasite vs a condition of your tank (as stated on RC). It seems that the pox spreads to a new tank via trade from another user. So here in lies the real question.

Why does a new frag develop pox while the former user never noticed it?

Answer:
They are not aware of it because they have a lot of frags in their tank.
or
They have something in their tank that keeps the pox from becoming a problem.

In My Opinion:
I have a feeling that the frag source (the person you traded with) may have something in their tank that keeps the zoa pox dormant. It may be a shrimp that keeps the frag clean, or certain water qualities that keep the pox from appearing.

In the end I don't know. All I know is that the pox will spread from zoa to zoa and most likely it will attach to small polyps or that connecting tissue between them.

Again, if you find something that helps your tank please post it on the thread I linked above so that everyone can find some help in this matter.

Thanks, and good luck

Luciano

 

[jonbar1]

Has anyone ever gotten it more than once in the same tank?

 

[mecold]

Good luck! I had them not long ago and only lost one morph totally! I did lots of waterchanges, and even left the lights out for a day and a half. One thing that appeared to help was cleaning the frags with a turkey baster. Also, having a cleanup crew that will take out the sick or dieing polyps (one time the hermits were useful) seemed to help. As has been mentioned before, I noticed the zoas that fared the worse were in direct bright light. The zoas that were shaded survived. HTH.

Paul

 

[berns]

well ive rechecked all 12 of my zoa colonies and found another couple with a few pox so now 4 colonies in a QT tank, of the 4 only 1 is bad whilst other 3 have a only a few pox here and there so ive taken oppotunity to frag some of the clean looking polyps.

interestingly the 8 untouched by pox (so far) are all pink varients and an all orange bam bam (no green) whilst the 4 effected are are green or green/orange combo = dragon eye, radio active dragon eye, green mouth solar's, and glowing green toxic.

also the dragon eye frag thats been in my frag tank for over 3 weeks and showed to be carrying the pox is in with loads pink varient frags yet all the pinks are clean.

another interesting note is of another small toxic zoa i have that was put next to the original toxic zoa rock (thats now got pox) for the last 2 weeks and has not been inflicted with the pox yet.

some of my pox do look like a bunch of eggs that can be easily scraped off whilst the bulk of the pox is under the skin of polyp, either being a while liquid sap or more solid sap

maybe cycle
egg looking before skin penertration,
skin penatration
white liquid stage
more solid stage

polyp losses
on 2 colonies so far 2 colonies, they were first not opening and then became covered in a brown algea looking stuff before disintigration.

anyway lots of darkness for QT tank and regular water changes and fingers crossed.

i realise my experiences would of been better posted on the running thread if id seen/read it before i started this one but as i can now only wait and maybe summerise at the end of my episode with pox ive continued here as my whole experience would be on 2 seperate threads.

 

[berns]

update and some interesting observations

the 4 zoa rocks i have infected with pox are all in a QT tank and everything im doin is all within the QT so everything is obviously staying in the same water durring all my activaties, also a shallow tray containing aragonite sand is placed in QT tank for use.

ZOA ROCK A (the host i think) - i guess half this rock of zoa's has already suffered die off and 90% of the remaining polyps are showing the pox, i removed all remaining POLYPS from this rock even tho most have pox on them and again kept all these loose polyps seperate/not touching each other on some aragonite sand, the early signs are good as this as stopped most of these polyps from dieing aswell, the uninfected polyps have not been infected and most of the polyps with pox are now looking perky and opening again with the pox spots actually going brown in colour.

ZOA ROCK B - similar to rock A and similar actions taken with similar results.

ZOA ROCK C - a loosely covered rock of polyps that was first infected polyps along bottom edge only and by removing most of the clean polyps and placing in sand tray seemed to of stopped the spread of pox to these polyps, the few remaining polyps i left on the rock have within a week become infected with the pox and are not looking like dieing.

ZOA ROCK D - a very small colony that ive done nowt but watch, so far about 50% of polyps showing white pox there has now been a small bit of die off and as more die off is looking evident im gonna remove all polyps as before and seperate/place on some aragonite sand.

after a couple of days in sand tray all perky polyps are glued to new growing plates and frag shells but are still kept in QT.

i have a feeling the pox is able to spread through the matting from polyp to polyp, when removing polyps from all 3 rocks so far the polyp matting is badly infected and the unseen root of the polyp has bad infection and the matting just sort of falls off the rock without any grip.

ill update ROCK C in a couple days after polyp removal and initial polyp survival count.

tobe honest if these polyps dont survive i really cant determine if they may have done as they are all still residing in QT with infected some infected zoa/polyps and prone to re infection

 

[jonbar1]

I'm not surprised your pinks remain untouched. All my larger polyped types seemed immune to it, and only the small polyped "typical" zoas were affected. I am guessing all your pinks are larger polyped, since I don't think I've ever seen a pink "typical" zoa.

Keep fighting the good fight! Eventually enough people will share their experiences and we can find a common thread and beat them.

 

[Reef Gardener]

Recently had the pox show up on some small green zoa that were on the end of a Pink paly colony, after reading alot on the pox decided to see if they would do better if I increased the water flow just a bit and not move them. Thinking that stress added to the damage the pox was causing. Happy to report that while I did lose about 1/3 of the greens, they are all looking fine now with no sign of the pox on them or any of the other zoa in the tank. Its been about 2 months now with no sign of it. So maybe the stress of dipping, moving and fragging adds to the damage??