Urgent help needed!

[Xavier613]

Slowly but surely I am losing polyp after polyp of my paly collection. I have observed lights on and lights off for hours and nothing is picking at them so it is something other than a predator.

I have read through forums and not seen anything entirely helpful so maybe you guys can help me. I will get actual pics of the palys that are dying right now, but here's a description of what happens:

Paly open and happy.
Paly grows and spreads after months in the tank.
Palys close one by one and appear to be pinched at the top.
Pinched palys die within days.

Billions of dollars lost (we'll not really but close)

Like I said ill try to get pictures, but basically as I said, they appear to be pinched at the top until they pop and melt basically. No spots. No predators.

Parameters:
Alk- 9.4
Ca- 410
Mg- 1300
Sg- 1.025
Temp- 78.0-78.5

Tank has been up for a year. No other problems. Some colonies unaffected. No other corals have problems.

Up for anything now. Losing my 5 color rainbows colony as we speak. :'(

 

[Hawkeye]

i'm not a zoa expert but just wanted to say sorry to hear this.

I presume you tried dipping the zoas to verify there are no predators?

 

[Xavier613]

Dipped iodine, fresh water, revive, coral rx, peroxide or whatever, basically every option lol.

Thank you for the sympathy.

 

[downbeach]

Any chance of allelopathy, sweeper tentacles of neighboring corals?

 

[Xavier613]

Nope, I have isolated the colonies and Frags onto their own part of the sand. Away from anything else.

 

[Sunny]

I know that palys and zoa do not like very clean water. What kind of skimmer do you have? How many times are you feeding? If your water is too clean and stripped of nutrients, then zoa will not be happy.

 

[adesimone1]

Try moving them in indirect flow our zoas and palys always react to flow.maybe try some coral accel that might open them up

 

[shipwrecked]

I feel for ya bud,I had the same thing happen to me a few mnths back.I lost my nuclear greens,purple deaths and dragon eyes which were nice size colonies,and never knew why or how it happened.All the others were fine and havent lost anything since...gd luck and hope u find the problem soon

 

[Whitebird1]

Try this, By the looks of your cal and alk are you adding supplements? If so stop. Let the tank calm down. Do water changes daily, my 160 combined system gets avg 5 gal a day and the palys and zoos love it. With all those dips and no results I would look at the water and changes over a period of time may fix this. You should see results in as little as 3-5 days.
Gregory

 

[asonitez]

do you ever see asterina stars? if you have a lot of asterina stars then chances are they are NOM NOMMING on yer zoos. This has happened to me and i removed them constantly and bought a Harlequinn shrimp.

 

[mnat]

Zoos are very finicky, much tougher than most people think. There could be numerous issues, I will list a few that I have run into.

1. As mentioned above asterinas. If you have them in your tank they are probably going after your zoas. They can attack one or two polyps which can get infected and then spread through colonly. You could have other predators in the tank but it does not sound like it.
2. Bacerial issues. I noticed with all your dips you did not mention Furan II which is one of the best dips out there. That can cure some bacterial issues that the other dips won't.
3. Flow, where are the colonies positioned vs your water flow? For example are the ones you are losing in low flow areas? Low flow can lead to bacterial and other issues which can cause you to lose a colony.

 

[TanksNStuff]

I agree with a lot that's been said so far. If all those dip options don't help any, then it's either flow lack of nutrients that's bothering them. I'd suggest doing a bigger water change initially (to help get more trace elements into the system ASAP) and then do some smaller water changes daily for a few days.

Also, make sure they're not sitting in the jet stream... maybe move them to the corner or something for a bit.

Hope it all works out Xavier.