zoas still doing sucky....

[nemofish2217]

I can't figure out for the life of me what's going on with my zoas...i posted a thread a while back but they still haven't gotten better, i was hoping others might be able to give me more suggestions.... the only thing that tested way low was the alk at 6, and i have been working to bring this up...could the low alk cause the problem? My RPE are totally unaffected by whatever is going on, and the rest of my corals, hammer, toadstool, mushroom, monti cap. My pistol shrimp, fire shrimp, and fromia star are doing fine too so i don't think water quality itself is an issue. any more thoughts?

zoas when they looked good.


now....they don't stay closed up but a snail had just gone over them... but you can see how much smaller they are..


before..


now..


before..


now...


I am totally dumbfounded....dips don't work.... i have no clue what else to do...

[killingseed]

i'd like you give you a better answer but i can’t. i would like to share some related images and issues i have dealt with. First couple images are some zoa’s when they were in another tank, a buddies tank. They were getting bad like 4 or 5 different colonies. Shrinking , shirt sucked in, barely open.
2007:07:12 21:28:53




Ok all I did was move them from that tank to my tank. I did dip them looking for predators before entering my tank and then placed them in my tank. This image was a month after the above images. not the best picture but major improvement. They are more open and the shirts are now visible.
2007:08:08 16:01:09


This picture was taken a couple months later. They were doing great maybe a month after the last image. I needed to get my hands a good camera.
2007:10:14 15:37:01


All I did was change their environment. Not sure why they were not doing good in the other tank. They had been in that other tank for year or so doing great.

maybe move them to another tank or a buddies tank for a short term.

[Pufferpunk]

Check out the thread about adding Vitamin C.

[nemofish2217]

killingseed, thanks for those pics..they are eerily similar to mine...what did you dip them in? Also, how did your setup differ from his lighting, flow, params, etc. I'm wondering if one of my trace elements are low.... maybe i'm getting somewhere...

[killingseed]

i dipped them in lugols iodine. i was thinking over night and one ofthe rock had a red film on them you can kind of see it on the second image right in the middel I tooth brush somee off while dipping. Not all the rocks where covered with it. another rock was cover with some type of gray looking sponge cover a good part of the rock which I did my best to remove, which has grown back some to this day. Another rock had a a yellow sponge which I remove and has not returned. I only found a couple pod from the dip.
his tank has 8x54 nova lights. two rio 1700 power heads for flow. a sump/refuge that i made from a 30 gl. with a coralife superskimmer with a mag 12 return which i think is over kill but another story. tanks are both the same 75 gl aga. his water par are in check. i know this because i check them with a test kit less then 6 months old at that time.
my specs are as followed, 75gl ,20gl refug, 2x mjmods, Rio 10HF return, 2x 175 xm 15k,1 super actinic,1 aquamedic blue actinic.
Not sure this help I do dose red slime remover for red slime ever couple months. It’s the only other thing I do different. I just cant get it under control. He doesn’t dose anything and I don’t dose anything other then the red slime remover.
I use ro water. No di unit yet. He uses fliter water from a company call the windmill. Not sure what the tds readings are for windmill. I know my water show 15 on the tds metter or less. I have plans on upgrading my ro unit hoping it improves my red slime problems.

Ok not sure I missed anything so forgive me if I have.

[mgny]

Had problems with my zoas for a while. The problem was my calcium test kit was bad. The kit was showing a reading of 300. For a few weeks i tried to get the level up. Started to think the kit could be bad. The new kit showed the level at 700 plus! The amazing thing was the lps, sps, clams were fine. The zoas were the only corals that were doing poorly. Was pretty cool to see them begin to open as i slowly lowered the level to 450. Months later they are thriving again. Have been reefin since 1996, Amazed how i could make such a rookie mistake. Luckily i didnt wipe out the whole 180! Check your test kit!

[killingseed]

Mgny i agree that cal level could do that but not in my case not sure about nemofish2217 case. It is impossibleto have high cal level in my tank or the other tank I was reffering to . We don’t dose cal , alk or anything like that. So in turn our cal level could never be over the recommanded levels.

Forgot to add we both do waterchanges I do them once a month he does it once a week.

[nemofish2217]

Well, i guess i need to make sure my calc test kit is accurate...

I do have that red slime on a couple of the rocks, but not all. I guess i might try dipping them again in lugols. did you find that it was really hard to remove? what concentration did you do? i get my RO water from the LFS, so i guess it could be tainted, but i doubt it as all of every thing else is doing fine...

Thanks a lot for your help so far... it is nice to see that mine might still have hope...

[nemofish2217]

p.s. the only supplement i add is the kent marine two part, and i only started doing that daily recently....i think whatever was going on in your friend's tank is going on in mine.... has he tried to add any other zoas since then?

[killingseed]

yes, a small frag he got cheep from LFS with like 5 heads. they seemed to be doing ok, last i checked. there are still zoa's in his tank i couldnt get to at the time i took those others. they are in bad shape but still there. they dont look like they will ever recover. the rock was too big to pull. they look worse then image 6 you posted what odd thing is they are still in there and still opening somewhat and look bad i figured they be gone but now 6 two 8 months later. no shirt barly open but open, reduced size, discolored. i go there everyweek or so i will try to head over there and take a pictures of the remaining zoa's that i could not get out at the time of his problem, maybe later today.

[nemofish2217]

so, how did you do your dip? do you think i might be lacking some trace element? its weird because the water is testing fine. Did he ever try to dip his and put them back in his tank?

[chillman]

definitely do a water change. sometimes that helps for me. I also sometimes move the zoa colony from one tank to a second tank, my frag tank, which does not share water at all with original tank, and interestingly enough that often rejuvenates the zoas and they start to look good after a week or so. not sure what was effecting them but switching to another tank seems to help. I guess that advice only helps if you have a frag tank...

[nemofish2217]

do you ever move them back to the original tank?

[MUCHO REEF]

any update?