So once and a while some of our zoas in our tank will take a dive. I was able to shoot a good photo of my beautiful days that were all beat up. We have some ideas of why they may be crashing. First possibly zoa pox, then nudibranches, a possible hitchhicker. I would love some feedback on the pic! We have never found nudibranch eggs on the zoas. We do have two sexy shrimps but have been carefully watching to make sure they are not picking at the zoa skirts. They are very well feed. We did have a limpet population explosion but we have been slowly taking them out and placing them in our sump. Any ideas?
---------- Post added at 12:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 PM ----------
p.s. I also tried peeling/picking off the white dots on a few of the zoa polyps that you see in the pic but the zoas split so i just coral dipped it and i am keeping my fingers crossed it will come back.
It looks like a fungal infection to me. You should dip them in Furan-2 made by API. Used for treating fungal infections in freshwater fish, but works great for zoas. One packet per cup of tankwater and dip all of your zoas for 15 minutes. They always come right back and it will kill all that crap on them. You can repeat the treatment after a couple days, but should wait a week after that.
I agree with the Furan 2 suggestion. If you can't find any, I can mail you a few tablets.
Also I'd recommend doing a couple water changes and add some fresh carbon and GFO. I've found that routine will often pep my polyps back up and certainly wouldn't hurt as an added measure.
So I decided to go with the Furan 2 solution. Now I have a few other questions to any one that may know. How do you go about dipping it? Is it compared to a coral dip or does in need to go in a quarantine tank? For how long?
Mix one packet for each cup of tankwater. Put it in a container that will be deep enough to cover your zoanthids. I have several "combo" rocks with lots of different zoas, so I have to use two or three packets. I use one of those disposable fruit salad containers like you get at Meijer Make sure it is well mixed and temp shouldn't be a problem, as you just took it from your display tank. I do six or seven at a time. Put the zoanthids in the mixture and leave them in there for 15 to 20 minutes. Take them out and put them in a rinse container of just tankwater. Shake them off and inspect them for anything else you need to take care of (like algae or whatever) before you put them back in your tank. Treat ALL of your zoanthids. Take six or seven more frags out of your tank and repeat the process until all zoanthids have been dipped. A couple of days later, you can re-treat any that appear to require further treatment in a fresh batch of the Furan 2 solution, but then you should give them a week to recover before any further treatment.
Hope this helps!