Problem with zoo colony

[TomD]

You know I did have a small Emereld rip up an acan lord and I just caught him last night!!

He finally came out far enough. If it was anything I dont know why I did not think of the crab first. As much as it looked like an emerald something was strange.

He stayed real small when the other 2 much bigger. I think he was mixed in as an emerald and was not from the store.

 

[Behrmon]

I had an emerald chomp an a zoa colony, he left some pretty good White scrapes on the rock. Caught him red clawed!

 

[JayM]

An emerald used to pick at zoas....but I think (hope) he was after the algae......and now I need to put one in my 92, because I have some bubble algae starting to grow up the highest parts of the tank.

 

[Aquaman_68]

I have never heard of a YT eating zoos but anything is certainly possible. I did actually watch a large emerald crab chomp 3 whole zoo polyps once as soon as he was dropped in our tank. If something is hungry enough, it may go after just about anything. It doesn't sound to me as though your YT is starving though.



It might be worth setting up a camera to see if anything is munching on them or maybe just get up in the middle of the night and check it out. I would certainly also check them out for nudis or sundials, maybe with a magnifying glass. If you have access to a microscope, that would be perfect for finding critters that are hard to spot with the naked eye. Sundials and nudis can be very tiny and hard to spot, sometimes they blend right into the zoos.

I've seen yellow, purple & hippo tangs whack zoos in the past cause they got the taste!!! Sundials take a very very very long time to make zoos disappear. They eat very slow. I remember having a sundial snail on a zoo colony way back when I first started reefin. I had the snail on the colony for a couple years & it couldn't eat fast enough for the zoo colony to show any signs of getting smaller. I decided to remove it after a long stint...just to see how big it had gotten...It didn't grow all that much but it isn't that small to begin with...I don't see a problem with seeing one of those at all. You just have to look for them when the zoos are closed up. (usually at night unless you drip Kalk at that time) Never saw another one on that colony or any other for that matter after I removed that one.... Nudis on the other hand...never had them but I have seen them in another reefers tank...(but he put them in to keep his zoo population down in his tank. (He had some LR with ugly zoos on he couldn't get rid of!!) Those are smaller when babys & a little bigger as adults... Like the monti eating nudes!! Tom, Watch that tang!!!! early when the lights first come on or before you start feeding!!
B

 

[HMac]

RC had an interesting thread about Zoo's disease- white spots - did anyone else read this? Brian and I had a few colonies that started out with the spots and then seem to melt away. This tread had several remedies to try. Some felt that we should just leave the Zoo's alone. If I can find it again I will add the link. Maybe this can help?

 

[HMac]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=691978

This is kinda long but maybe there will be some helpful info???

 

[TomD]

Thanks for all the great advice everyone. I am sure it will come in helpful at some time.

Tonight I got home and almost all the zoos are back open. I just caught this crab that ate the lords last night so now I really think he was starting to munch on other corals.

 

[skyedolphan]

Just a FYI check your mag and alk params
some zoas are especially sensitive to alk others not at all
but I remember talking to someone last year after I started loosing my zoas and sure enough when I checked my alk had dropped to 5.8DKH ? when it was always a steady 11-14 the drop caused the tidal water zoas to invert themselves and melt away adn I believe that was the onset of my bacteria fight ...
I believe hydrogen peroxide can work miracles BUT it takes a week or so to sometimes tell it is best to keep a down hill colony in QT away from others..

 

[Bitingthesun]

This is happening in my tank too, more than a few colonies. I did the 1:10 Hydrogen Peroxide dip with little to no results. They keep trying to open but stay closed most of the time.

 

[TomD]

Just a FYI check your mag and alk params
some zoas are especially sensitive to alk others not at all
but I remember talking to someone last year after I started loosing my zoas and sure enough when I checked my alk had dropped to 5.8DKH ? when it was always a steady 11-14 the drop caused the tidal water zoas to invert themselves and melt away adn I believe that was the onset of my bacteria fight ...
I believe hydrogen peroxide can work miracles BUT it takes a week or so to sometimes tell it is best to keep a down hill colony in QT away from others..

Thanks for the advice Dawn. Alk/CA/MG were all checked asap followed by nitrates, phosphates, and ph.

Everything was the same. I will keep that in mind though to make sure I stay on top of it because it drops fast with no reactor.

 

[TomD]

I guess this crab was nipping at all my zoos and I just did not notice they were all looking bad, just not closed.

Today they all look 10X better. Some of the colonies look like they doubled in size since I got this crab out 2 days ago!