Help whats happening to my Zoa's

[purple_jeep]

Hi All,

I am hoping you can help me save my Zoa's, looks like something or someone (FileFish?) is killing off my zoa's (one variety in particular). I first noticed a colony at one end of the zoa rock had retracted and now looks like its died completely and thought maybe I hit it when cleaning or something but now I see the same variety but another colony on the other end of the rock seems to be suffering the same fate also... I did do a waterchange when I did the cleaning so I will need to check parameters but all other coral seem fine...

Its the bright green zoa's that seem to be suffering the most...

Thoughts?

Cheers

Chris

 

[6t4nova]

Could definitely be the file fish. I had to remove mine as it was eating my zoas

 

[DED65]

It could be Vermitid snails like your other post. Looks like they are growing through the Zoa’s and underneath.

 

[bkwonnn]

I struggled with my zoas also
But now the are good.
Could be one of these
- too high par
- dinos
- shortage of Vitamin C

 

[aqquabubbles]

If you could I would recommend going out about an hour to 2 hours after lights shut off. Look for anything, worms, spiders and more commonly look for large amounts or big amphipods, or fish eating your coral.


How much flow are your zoas under?

Now zoas are weird there are a multitude of reasons for this to be happening. And most of the time it either comes down to something messing with it, or some parameter they are lacking or have in excess.

A few suggestions to hopefully help your zoas, this has always helped mine when unhappy.

1. If your zoas are in lower flow try to increase flow slightly on the colony, this will help blow away dead skin and also prevent things from settling on them at night.

2. For the time being try increasing salinity to around 1.026, increased amounts of salinity can help most all corals become more resilient, increase the chance they come back.

Suggestion for saving:

Id recommend taking about a gallon of water from your tank. Go ahead and get yourself coral rx. Take your entire Zoa rock and place it into your gallon of tank water. Use 4 capfuls of coral rx and mix thoroughly. Set a timer for ten minutes. Durring this time gather one more gallon of tank water. Set this aside in a separate bucket. At the 7 minute mark go over to the dip bucket and use a Turkey baster and blow off as much crap as you can from the rock. Possibly scrape any of the dead skin away so the decay doesn’t spread to the healthy zoas. Keep working on blasting it off until the ten minute mark and remove the rock from the dip bucket.

Place rock into the separate gallon of water for a rinse. I recommend using 45 drops of lugols iodine. It might seem like a lot but iodine can help zoas open back up, I’ve done it multiple times with mine. A much smaller ratio I often use is 5 drops of iodine per red solo cup of water. Let your Zoa rock sit inside this gallon of water with iodine for 15 minutes. At the 15 minute mark you can place your rock back into the tank.
(no need for another rinse as iodine can be beneficial to a reef.)

During that 15 minutes you can take a flashlight and inspect the remains from the dip water. Maybe you’ll fine some pests that lead you to another explanation.

Hopefully this works for you man! Good luck!

 

[ReefStable]

This definitely looks like something attacking them. I will speak from experience that Filefish DO eat zoas.

That being said, I agree with @aqquabubbles. You should check for Zoa Eating Nudibranchs, Spiders, or a variety of other things. You can also remove the Filefish and place it in a different tank. If things start to heal, you likely found the problem.

Best of Luck!