zoa fragging gone bad?

customanimalart · #1 08/19/2007, 09:27 PM

Okay, here's my situation.
I had a colony of over 60 polyps of RPE's and decided to frag up the colony.
I don't know if I did anything wrong, so I will post what I have done.
The polyps that were fragged aren't looking too hot. It has been 3 days and today they looked just awful They had brown slime spewing out from them and their polyps (closed) were covered in it. There are also some that have gone totaly "white" as in lost their color and easily dislodge from the rock.
What has happened to them?

I took them out one by one and gave them a dip (using product "coral dip') and gently scrubbed the junk off the polyps with a toothbrush and put them back into the frag tank in the hopes to stave of bacterial infection. They have decent flow and all my params are in the proper range.

This is the procedure that I did:
*I first took out the colony and tried to get as many of the polyps to close as I could using the powerhead and giving them a shake at the surface of the tank. I even touched some of the polyps (I had gloves on, don't worry) and not all would close up.

*I then dropped the coral into a bowl of RO FW dip (using "coral dip"-not lugol's) just incase there were some nasty critters, but there were none. I was confident there weren't any as I dip before I put into display. I would use my QT but it is full of chaeto leaving no room for anything else.

*I then began to break the rock apart with bone cutters trying to be as gentle as I could not to rip any of the polyps, but I had to cut some anyways to split them up.

*After I fragged each piece (ranging from 8-15 or so polyps each) I dropped it into a SW dip container for 3-5 minutes and put it back into the tank.

(They were put into the frag tank, not the original display tank)
I did this with all of them, and put half of the mother colony back into the display tank.

Did I make a horrible mistake by using the FW DIP at the start? I have fragged polyps once before using the same procedure except skipped the FW dip, and those polyps opened right away and showed no signs of fungus or dying off.

I would post pictures but my good camera is broken. I fried it by accident by plugging a 12V adapter into the 6v plug of the camera to try to charge the battery. Ooops! Now, I am camera-less. I am so PO'd. Electronics is not my forte.

So, any help here is appreciated. I would hate to lose 4 decent and somewhat popular frags due to my stupidity.

dc_909 · #2 08/19/2007, 09:52 PM

I never use FW as a dip.

swannL11 · #3 08/19/2007, 10:22 PM

FW dip before fragging probably did the poor little guys in.
Yikes...used a tooth brush to clean. Holding in front of power head or blowing off with turkey baster might be less stressful.

customanimalart · #4 08/19/2007, 10:54 PM

Aw man.
I guess I screwed up. There is so much info on message boards and in books. I read the FW dips don't hurt the corals. I believe it was in my Reef Invertebrates-anthony calfo and robert fenner. I will double check to be sure as I don't want to put out "wrong" info here.

The toothbrush was done VERY lightly as the powerhead didn't get alot of it off. They were really covered with the brown film.
(toothbrush is another thing I read too somewhere)

Well, I guess I will cross my fingers and hope for the best. Live and learn, right?

CORRECTION: FW dips is mentioned in my book Aquarium corals by Eric Borneman. I knew I read it somewhere.

He states that FW dips can be done briefly for 1-3 minutes to eliminate parasites (flatworms, brown jelly infections, cyano etc)
He says though that some corals may not tolerate this such as xeniids and small-polyped corals.
The difference is that I added coral dip to the FW. I guess I got confused there. Ugh! TMI to retain.

ct_vol · #5 08/20/2007, 04:29 PM

Usually FW dips and "scrubbing" is done before adding the frags to your display, after they've had a chance to heal... Really, all you did is stress them out even more before you cut them up... Fragging RPE's is pretty simple, but even the most experienced of us run into problems now and again... I fragged my colony of PPE's and lost half of them... I've fragged the colony at least a dozen times and never had a problem... This time, for some reason they've decided to do poorly... Oh well, hopefully they'll turn around sooner rather than later...

customanimalart · #6 08/20/2007, 04:37 PM

I guess we all gotta learn somehow.
The main colony looks like it will fair okay with only a few polyp losses. The frags are pretty bad. It is still too early to tell for sure, but it looks like only 1 out of the 4 bigger ones will come out with half the polyps that it had to start with.

Too bad you lost the PPE frags. Those are pretty pricey right now, unfortunately, as I want some really bad. As well as some nuclear greens. =?

ct_vol · #7 08/20/2007, 04:58 PM

I haven't lost any yet, but they just don't look nice enough for me to sell/trade... Oh, YGPM... lol

Lord Sevein · #8 08/21/2007, 12:26 AM

Wow sorry to hear about that customanimalart. I have never heard of a FW dip before fragging but I do know that my zoas look pretty stressed out after I have dipped them. Doing that and then fragging was probably a mistake . . . but oh well at least your mother colony looks like it will pull through. I want to thank you for sharing your experience with the rest of us! This should help prevent future mistakes myself by other reefers. I'm just sorry it had to be at the expense of your RPE's.

Actually . . . now that I think about it your frags may still be ok. About a week ago the zoa/paly frags that I am using to test the advanced propagation experiment looked really bad. Now they are much better! I am amazed at the zoa/paly's ability to recover from very bad situations.

Keep us posted . . . I'm pulling for your zoas!!

-Sevein

customanimalart · #9 08/26/2007, 03:10 AM

Well, I lost 4 of my frags. The main colony is doing fine thus far and the largest of the frags has about 7 polyps or so that show signs of "health" out of the 25 or so polyps it had in the beginning.

I think I went wrong with that first FW dip. Next time I won't do that. At least I didn't lose them all. Whew!
I should have known better I think. The FW dip is supposed to be initially for quick parasite removal, such as flatworms, (1-3 min) and apparently not pre-fragging. I just did that on my own thinking that it wouldn't hurt. Boy-was I wrong. =?

NanoReefWanabe · #10 08/26/2007, 11:12 PM

huh..i just smash my zoas up with a hammer and screw driver...put them back in tank and let them recover i do it as fast as i possibly can..maybe keeping them out of the water for a max of 3 minutes..

i am a dumb *** and dont have t fumble with them though as i dont bother with gloves...

and sometimes i even tear them appar if they wont separate..i just close my eyes and hope they dont spray me..