My palys are melting...

[mamagoose45]

Is there anything to do at this point or is it pretty much over for them? They had been looking rough for a while but had looked like they might pull through.... Now I would say that is certainly not the case. Any options, or just let 'em melt?

[gflat65]

What do you mean by Paly and what do you mean by melting? Are they an actual Palythoa species, or a just a big zoa? Some Paly sp. are pretty ticky. I've been told that Purple Deaths die more frequently if you do a zoa dip on them, etc. I've got some green button polyps that I've had for about 8 years. They have gone through good and bad stages. In the bad stages, they would close up and slowly wither away. I can't point to any one thing that I did that corrected the problem the numerous times it has happened over the years (the colony started back from 3-4 polyps several times). Changing bulbs seemed to do it once, better flow another, more filtration, etc. Don't you love quantitative answers that you can immediately apply:D. Wish I had one for ya;). If they are truly melting (just sloughing off tissue), I doubt there is much to do for them. If they are just closed up and slowly withering away, a dip might help, or a change in location. May not, though... No Pests? Good luck.

[Lint_Licker]

I'd check for pests, been a lot of nudi's going around lately. I pulled of close to 20 and some egg clutch's off some zoa's recently, dipping killed the bigs but not the little ones, I pulled the rest off in a QT and are now pest free.

[mamagoose45]

After some investigating, Brian says they are protopalythoas. They are big green and brown polyps that grow up out of a mat. If I recall correctly they were sold to us as button polyps. Everything else in the tank looks happy, so I doubt pests (never say never though I guess...) I'm going to try to move the rock tonight and see if there is any hope for them with a lighting change...

[c_stowers]

I've had this happen a few times to me. The only luck I have had is to frag off a few peices and drop them in different tanks. Usually, at least one peice pulls through for me. I imagine that you've got something in your water that has just triggered the palys to go into death mode and trying to fix the problem would take to much time. You need to remove some of the paly's and get them in a different environment.

[gflat65]

Yeah, likely Proto psammaphila? Those are the ones I was refering to with the tempermental attitude... I've not found any correlation between conditions, as they've done good in nearly all spots and bad in nearly all spots at one time or another...

[mamagoose45]

Relocated to the frag tank...a few of the polyps that were stretching out from the underside of the rock look like they are trying to open so maybe there is hope that some of them will pull through. We shall see.

[DMBillies]

I'm really wondering if this is all just part of our interesting problem we have with keeping zoanthids... which is to say we suck at it (although we've never had zooanthids quite "melt" like these).

Give me an acro over a zoanthid any day...

[Bebo77]

happens to me too.. all i could do was frag and place in different areas of the tank to try and save them....