Zoo Problems :(

[bill0298]

Has anyone seen zoos do this before? I have had this colony for about a month now with no problems until a day or two ago.. As you can see in the picture one zoo appears to be shrinking... Now, if this was an isolated incident I wouldn't be too worried.. However, I lost an entire colony of blue zoos and a colony of yellow polyps in the same fashion.. Eventually, the polyps will not open at all and then fall off of the rock never to be seen again... I'm not quite sure whats going on here???? Everything checks out with my water, I do regular changes, feed sparingly, occasionally feed DT's, and have had the tank running with no major problems for approx 14 months...

Thanks in advance...
Bill

72 gal bow front
20 gal refigum
PH 8.1 - 8.3
Ammonia 0.0
Nitrite 0.0
Nitrate - Not really measurable
PO4 - <.1 ppm
sg- 1.024

[bill0298]

Oh, almost forgot....

lighting - 48" quad power compacts

The zoos are sitting on the upper middle section of the tank...

[XXFirefighter]

did this happen as soon as you started feeding DT's?

[bill0298]

No, I have been intermittently feeding DT's over the last ten months or so..
Thanks..

[bill0298]

Just a thought Not enough lighting? Maybe it just took this long to effect the zoo's?

[Jason]

cut the ones that look like that off and put the zoos in front of a powerhead. It's a fungus that grows on zoos. Probably(and i'm just guessing), you got all the colonies that died from the same place and this one came from there too.... it's something about where they come from I think. I lost an awesome colony of about 300 bright orange and baby blue ones that same way. Fortunately I cut the last little piece and tossed it in a QT tank by itself.... they won't open but they haven't fell off yet.

If I had it to do over again I would have cut the part that looked like it was dying off and about 1/4" extra around it and scraped the rock until none of the top part of that rock was on it then stick it directly in front of a powerhead for a couple days. but that's just what I would do.

I guess a good rule of thumb when picking out zoas is to make sure the rock they are on doesn't look like broken chalk anywhere. Form my expierience the white chalky-lloking rock is from where the zoas were matted on the rock at one point in time and nothing ever grew on the rock, so something had to take the zoas off the rock.....

I have a colony of about 6 bright-orange ones that were dying at the LFS the owner gave me because I said I could save them.... I did exactly what I told you to do and they are fine now....... the colony that I had die on me came in the same order. so I would try to cut the dead part off and put it in a strong flow.

[bill0298]

Hmmm........ That makes sense..... I fragged a healthy piece of the blue zoo colony just before it melted down and that frag seems to be doing fine.... Does anyone know of any medication that would correct this problem? Yesterday I cut the piece of rock that the dying zoo's were on and moved it to a QT tank, i'm still waiting to see how they do....

Thanks....

[vertex]

Hi everyone, I just found this recent post about how zoos shrinking and dying off. I seem to have the same problem with some I recently bought. Two colonies were on the rock and one colony is doing fine and the other seems to be shrinking away. They are only about 2-3 wks in the tank but I don't want to loose them.

You guys mentioned cutting away the dying ones and scraping the rock or fragging away the healthy ones. How can I do this if they are all on the same rock? I assume you don't scrape them off the rock in any way? I don't think I can break the rock they are one, it looks very solid (dense)...

Any help would be appreciated.. Thanks...

[bill0298]

I was able to break a piece of the rock of with the good zoos on it, however the rock they are attached to was not that dense. I have in the past removed zoos from a rock by scraping them off with a razor blade and then super glueing them to another rock, I've had about a 90% success rate with this method. The other 10% fell off and disappeared into the depths of the reef...

Bill