Free Roaming Zoanthids

[DHarms]

Some of my zoanthids have been letting go of the rock they are on and floating around the tank. They don't seem to have a mat of tissue at all, just polyps connected to live rock individually. Every so often a polyp or two will let go and float around the tank till it hits my tunze and gets stuck to it. I then can superglue it to a rock and it does fine.

Here are my test values:

Temp: 79-80
Salinity: 35ppm
PO4: .25ppm
KH: 8.6dKH
Ca: 390ppm
pH: 8.4
Nitrates 0 (no ammonia or nitrites)

The only thing that seems out of whack is my phosphates. I think it is because of bad makeup water. I changed out my RO/DI filters yesterday, they had some algae growing in the canisters (they are outside.)

This is a 70 gallon tank with 250w MH and 150w VHO actinic.

Anyone have any ideas? All of my other corals are doing fine, SPS and LPS thriving. Most of my zoanthids are too for that matter.




Colony in question.


Close up showing lack of mat. You can see polyps budding though.

[aaron23]

my educated guess would be strontium have you done any water changes lately?

[DHarms]

I do a 6 gallon change every week.

[DHarms]

That colony COVERED the rock when I got it on November 19th of this year.

[ALTI]

strontium?

they look like the might be reaching for the light a little. are they in a shaded area. they look pretty healthy to me. sometimes they will move if they dont like their placement. it could be light, it could be flow or both. try moving them and seee what happens.

p.s. dont worry about strontium

[DHarms]

I've had them low in the tank and now high in the tank. From strongish flow to medium now. Tried 4 different placements. The polyps were falling off in all of them.

High phosphates not likely to be causing this?

[aaron23]

i have read that strontium keeps the soft corals and stuff intact. On the back of the kent strontium / molyb bottle it reads EXACTLY "Strontium and molybdenum supplement provides these elements needed for proper growth and health of hard and soft corals. Corals will open more and stay attached to their skeletons better with regular use." I have also heard this from my local LFS who has dealt with the marine aquaria hobby for over 20 years.

[DrBDC]

Hogwash. You don't even need to add that stuff. If you do the proper 15-20% weekly water change you have all you need.

[EricHugo]

so is the question about the phsophates, the zoanthids coming loose, or both?

[DHarms]

Well, I gotta say I never dosed anything pre-Katrina and my zoas did fine for 8 months...

It's like something is just weird in my tank post-Katrina.

[ALTI]

:0

[DHarms]

The question is: Can the phosphates be causing the roaming?

I know I have to get the phosphate situation under control, no matter what, and hopefully they will be when I start doing water changes with the water from the new RO/DI cartridges. Planning on doing 12 gallons tomorrow and again in a couple days.

[DHarms]

And if it isn't likely to be phosphates, what else should I be considering?

I guess I have just never seen zoanthids with no mat at all before, and certainly not letting go to fly around the tank.

[DrBDC]

I get some free polyps occationally but my first guess would be maybe there is some corraline die off on the rock and the flaking is letting some polyps loose? Did you have a long period of power outage in your area after the hurricaine?

Phosphates could be causing some corraline die off too. Even though your numbers really aren't that high it will help to get them down with water changes. I'd think about an iron based phosphate reducer like phosban to help out. It would be great to have 0 show since alot of them can't be tested for.

In the meantime break up some live rock and start a little zo frag bus.

[DHarms]

This is all fresh stuff since Katrina, everything died when the power was out for 17 days. This particular rock had no coralline to begin with.

I just ordered a PhosBan reactor and everything to go with it. Should be here Wednesday.

I have also started doing little frags. I have 4 so far with a few polyps each.

I've been fighting cyanobacteria the last couple of weeks. I hope the phosban and the new RO/DI cartridges will knock it out. I have beaucoup flow in the tank so I don't think it is flow related. (Not so much flow that the zoas are getting battered though.)

[DaddyJax]

Grounding probe?

[DHarms]

I had one but I took it out a few days ago thinking it might be causing the problem.

[Surf]

Originally posted by DHarms
I had one but I took it out a few days ago thinking it might be causing the problem.

what reason did you have for thinking that was the problem?

Here's what you do know:
1) PO4 is testing high.

2)You had a contaminated water source. Fixed by changing filters

3)Your polyps are behaving oddly

I would suggest you do some 25% water changes weekly until PO4 reads 0. If PO4 still tests high, maybe your feeding is too high, maybe something else is wrong.

As for the phosban reactor, you shouldn't need one if you skimmer works well and you're not overfeeding. That being said, if my PO4 was reading high I might drop a bag of phosban in until I had enough water for the first water change.


Good Luck!

[Jon Lazar]

What other critters are in yor tank? I recently pulled a foxface out that started secretly eating polyps after a year of leaving them alone. I couldn't figure out why my SPS were doing great, but my zoos were always closed and slowly dieing off.

Jon

[DHarms]

Dunno why I thought the ground probe would be a problem exactly. I only have about half of my equipment plugged into a GFCI and I wasn't sure what might be going on in the tank. Finding a GFCI around here is a PITA to say the least. I am going to check at Home Depot tomorrow when I am off of work.

Critters: Yellow tang, and 3 reef chromis, canary wrasse and a YWG. A few hermits and typical snails. Nothing is eating them, they are litterally just coming loose and floating about the tank. I thought at first maybe it was the large emerald crab I have, knocking them loose while searching for algae, but they continued coming loose while I had him banished to the 'fuge.

I've done 2 12 gallon water changes in the last couple days. I am hoping to get the PO4 under control and see if they keep coming loose. It seems as though none have fallen off in the last few days, maybe the worst is over and I have rounded a corner.

Thanks for all the responses guys. Anyone else have 2¢ they want to add?

[scott_richards]

My zoo's did the exact same thing. I got a rock absolutely full of 'em, now they are pretty sparse. However it's not such a bad thing. A few of the zoo's have found another home and actually decided to stay there. Most however just ended up stuck on the pump. I acutally have one that made its way to the sump and has now acutally stuck itself on the return pump.

If they are still alive, I say it's ok. Just catch them and glue them. I don't have any glue, so I just tend to let them roam free