Zoa Pox or Nudi Egss...

[cameron]

Well its been a few weeks and I definitely have some sort of zoa problem that is causing a large number of my zoas close up. I am about to start a tank wide Furan2 nuke since it is just far too difficult to individually dip all my zoas as most are attached to my rock now.

Before I start this endeavor, I am going to be selling off my SPS and LPS. I will post the specifics later on but if you know me and want something specific out of my tank, PM me (and yes this includes my giant yellow cup, that purple/green/blue acro everyone asks about, that giant green slimer, monti cap, HUGE galaxia, both chalices, TONS of plating motipora, etc).

I see small white dots here and there, but it doesn't seem to rampant. Not sure if it is the dreaded zoa pox or nudi eggs as my eyesite isn't that good and it could be something totally different. I am going to try Furan2 first then the flatworm exit some have mentioned.

 

[jeep9783]

I would deff like some of your sps cameron if u could shoot out some prices as i can come an get after next wedenesday?

 

[haninja]

PMed.

 

[FutureInterest]

I think it would be safer and wiser to go with flatworm exit before trying the furan 2. Furan 2 from my understanding is effective against almost everything which means your good gram-negative bacteria will go bye bye as well and your tank will CRASH .

 

[cameron]

So much of my zoas are imbedded on and even in rock. So the plan is to sell off the sensitive stuff, move the zoas (including rock with zoas) out into a 20 gallon and nuke it with Furan, rinse, put back, large water change in 24 hours. Possibly do it all over again. If that doesn't work, flatworm exit the main tank.

Once everything stabilizes revisit (slowly) putting back the more sensitive organisms like clams and such.

 

[FutureInterest]

Gotcha. Now I see the whole plan. I thought you were dosing your entire tank heh.

 

[victor626nj]

cameron i have a 29 you can use instead of a 20 and you can does what ever you want in it i wont mind let me know victor ps no charge but ill take acro frags if your willing

 

[FutureInterest]

If they are nudis, there are a few types of wrasse that are known to eat both zoanthid eating nudis and montipora eating nudis. So a proper diagnosis might save you a lot of time and effort with a biological reef safe wrasse addition. The prettiest one that I know of that will eat the offending nudis is the radiant wrasse. One of my all time favorites, as pictures never do it justice. It is simply stunning, and is of course quite practical as well. Good looks and functionality.

The only stumbling block might be your sixline wrasse, which might destroy the radiant...

 

[dannybradley]

Furan2 is mainly Nitrofurazone, an antibiotic. Why would you use an antibiotic to treat nudibranchs? Use a 10 minute freshwater dip on your zoanthid colonies. They'll live through it and it will nuke everything else. Nitrofurazone is also VERY yellow. It takes a very large water change and running massive amounts of carbon to clear the water again. I know, I've used it in 800 gallon systems before.

If for some reason an antibiotic will kill nudibranchs that easily, use Kanaplex(kanamyacin) by Seachem. It's colorless and more effective than nitrofurazone.

 

[tsciarini]

Wow... this sucks. I hope everything works out for you Cameron!
Let me know if you need anything...

 

[cameron]

DannyBradley;81811 wrote: Furan2 is mainly Nitrofurazone, an antibiotic. Why would you use an antibiotic to treat nudibranchs? Use a 10 minute freshwater dip on your zoanthid colonies. They'll live through it and it will nuke everything else. Nitrofurazone is also VERY yellow. It takes a very large water change and running massive amounts of carbon to clear the water again. I know, I've used it in 800 gallon systems before.

If for some reason an antibiotic will kill nudibranchs that easily, use Kanaplex(kanamyacin) by Seachem. It's colorless and more effective than nitrofurazone.

Zoa Pox (which is what I think I have) is likely some kind of infection passed from one zoa to another. You can read more about it here:

http://www.zoaid.com/articles004.php">http://www.zoaid.com/articles004.php</a>

It is possible they are zoa eating nudibranch eggs, but I don't think they are.

 

[cameron]

FutureInterest;81756 wrote: Gotcha. Now I see the whole plan. I thought you were dosing your entire tank heh.

You can dose the entire tank and several have with this stuff. It is supposed to be biologically safe. It is designed to attack funguses and other bacterial diseases not the actual bacteria. I don't plan on doing it as I don't want to run the risk to the inverts and such in the tank. If my 12" clam bit it I think it would take the whole tank down if not caught in time.

 

[budsreef]

I feel your pain. I lost all of two colonies and half of each of the other colonies before I figured out what was wrong. During and after doing the treatment described in that article you referenced I didn't lose another polyp and all are doing well now so it does work. Luckily, I was dealing with mostly frags and not established colonies attached to large rock structures so it was easier for me to treat them and move them into another tank. I am just now slowly moving them back into my display tank.

Good luck with the treatment. If you have the space and equipment you might want to consider fragging some and move them into a third tank. They will be easier to treat and may improve your odds of having them to repopulate later.

 

[purplegorilla]

Hope you get everything works out. If it comes down to parting out. Please put me down for those purple and blue acros, chalices...

 

[cameron]

Nudis! I think... check the pics below. The pics are after I pulled out several zoas showing distress signs and picked off moving furry little ****s. They curled up once they were out of the water so you can't see the tenticles coming from their heads.

Well after a TON of research it appears there is no easy solution for these guys. Lots of people swear by Salifert Exit which I will try but appears to work in a handful of tanks and even it doesn't seem to effect eggs. It does piss off snails, pods and such as well. I also uncovered that eggs laid on zoas don't seem to respond to dips which basically means sticking an egg infested zoa in your tank will likely give you these things permenently. QTing zoas seems to be the only real solution. As for natural predators, there are a couple ID'd that MIGHT do it, but no guarantees that any fish that might eat them will eat them.

So the plan now is to dip in a batch of Flatworm Exit, Furan and Pro Coral couple times per week. I am going to pull off all the zoas I can from the rocks and let the rest become lunch.

As of now no more stuff is coming out of my tank and into someone elses as I do not want to spread this problem. I plan on doing more testing to get rid of these suckers. Will keep everyone updated.
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[justonemoretank]

Sorry Cam. This stinks big time for you. Good luck with the treatments.

 

[xyzpdq0121]

Cam, Call me tomorrow... I want to see the size and scale of the pics.

 

[cameron]

You can call me when you wake up... the size on most were about a millimeter or two... small and with my bad eyesite I couldn't get the little ones very well these are the big ones. I pulled most of these off one colony and dipped the rest. Lots of little floating nudis (at least a dozen) in the dip water but they became mush pretty quickly so their were probably lots more.

 

[budsreef]

Nudis might be even worse to deal with than zoa pox. I'm sure its going to be a lot of work and time to deal with them and wish you the best of luck with it. I think I'd still be tempted to set up an additional "safe" tank and frag some off each colony even if its just a couple of polyps just in case.

 

[cameron]

I thought it was going to be easy after several people touted the Salifert Exit as a cure, but after a lot of reading on the subject it appears to be pretty limited and rarely ever cures a tank. Like a lot of these kinds of problems, there just isn't a silver bullet.

I really want my zoas to make it as I have some gorgeous and a few fairly rare ones, but if they die under the feet of nudis then I guess that is what was meant to be. I am determined however to end the nudis existence here. They will not live on past my tank to infect someone elses.