sick zoanthids wit white stuff on its head

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corrales_305

New Member


I have had these zoanthids for a year now and they are loosing the "hairs" or tenicles around the head of the polyps. Or better said they dont have any hair at all, but when i first got then they did. one of the two colonies i have has some white on the head of the polyps. the other colony has no white on it but has no hairs around the head of the polyps either. i need to know what this is and how i can fix it.

salinity 0.23
calcium 500
iodine .02
carboate hardness 12dkh
temp 75-78 f
nitrates low
ammonia 0
phosphates low



 
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drnsee

New Member
Have you recently added anything to the tank? What other livestock do you have? Sounds more like predation or possibly allelopathy.
 
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corrales_305

New Member
I have a 6 line warsse and two clowns 3 hermit crabs and regular cleaning snails also a cleaner shrimp. I have had this same setup since I put up the tank 1 year ago. I have reacently added more zoanthiods coral to see what happens if they start loosing the hairs also I'm gonna be mad! The guy at the lps told me maybe I have too much light and am buring the polyps I have a 70w mh viper light and a 14 gallon tank. So I'm not sure if this can be a possiblity. But what could it be?
 
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drnsee

New Member
Hmm, see any small snails that look like this under the rock or around the zoa's matting?



& what kind of hermit crabs? BTW, I don't think that's too much light. It's odd that only the tentacles are being eaten and that it's so uniformly widespread though... Possibly a toxin in the water or from another coral, or do you just have zoas?

:bash1:
 
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corrales_305

New Member
i have blue and red legged hermit crabs(small) i haven't seen any snails around the zoanthiods but i have seen amipod, tube worms and white little brittle stars(look like the big serpent stars) that are hitch hikers on the live rock, also as for the coral: 1 tree coral, 1 tooth coral, 1 pulsating xenia, mushrooms and racordias. I bought two different zoathiod colonies at different times (about two months apart) and within some weeks time the newer colony lost its hairs too. some of the pink coral line algae has started turning white. i kind of stopped doing some water changes for some time before now. maybe my water quality wasn't so good for those months and caused the hairs to fall off. i am maintaining excellent water quality now, so i want to see if maybe they grow back. some of my mushrooms were not doing so well either. they were turning white also. if anyone has any suggestions let me know, thank!!!!!
 
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drnsee

New Member
Interesting. Does look similar, but could be harmless. Are you able to view the "door"...is it conical like this?

 
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corrales_305

New Member
no, its not the same snail.....but i noticed some stuff growing on the liverock. It looks the same as like when you feed your fish and the pellets turn soft and later disintegrate. kind of like spongy brownish hairs i dont know if its algae or something else. also, i saw what looked like spider webs but i dont have a fire scalope so i dont know what animal made this. Does anybody know what makes underwater webs and hurts zoanthiods?


this is what im talking about on the rock is this normal? the blue i marked show that the hairs are about an 1/8" long. or is this a bad water sign? or a organism?
 
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drnsee

New Member
Sounds like brown hair algae. Actually likes high flow... Physically siphon out and watch water quality. As for spider webs, can be some sort of worm or vermetid snail, relatively harmless. There's something else at work here.
 
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corrales_305

New Member
yes ,this area is a high flow area....... probably the area with most flow in my tank!!! so i am going to manually remove it and clean the rock with old tank water when i do a water change. thank you!!!!!!!
 
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