Huge amphipods are irritating/eating my zoas!

[Thepopo]

I seen amphipods eat just about anything when hungry. You have a ton of adults there. Add a fish or just let them be. I have even seen amphipods attack my mandarins when I first put mine in.

[cordell]

greech, you may very well be correct about the pod cleaning up a dead zoa. That doesn't explain why the polyps were and still are disappearing, though. Also, the polyps that are wide open are the ones that eventually disappear. It wouldn't be so surprising if there were some polyps that never extended or opened and the pods were eating/cleaning up those.

Thanks for the heads up on the Melanurus Wrasse. I'm still not 100% set that on that idea. I still have to get my Tricolor Wrasse out of QT, and he may very well help lower the amphipod population. The LFS got a nice Malanurus in this week, and as tempting as it was, I left it there. I think I will for sure leave out a six line wrasse because of their temperament.

I'm still not 100% set on the pods eating the zoas, I'm just stumped as to what else could be going on. I spent a good part of yesterday setting up one of my IP cams and a web host and all that junk to take pics of the zoa colony every 10 minutes. That should make it easy to see how the polyps are doing throughout the entire day... which ones are mostly open, mostly closed, and which ones are eaten!

I'll let ya know how that turns out... And thanks for all the good advice everybody!

[gweston]

I had such a pod population once. Extra large pods that would eat certain soft coral. Mainly paly's, but they also munched on a toadstool. I pulled some pods out and tried to compare them under magnification. The pods that were munching on the corals seemed to have more hooked looking claws(?) than the less aggessive pods. At least that is what conclusion I came to. Unsure if I was correct in my evaluation.

I got a 6-line wrasse and it make QUICK work of all the pods in the tank. Eradicated them, plus flatworms in the process. The bad pods were gone. But also so were the others. Eventually the wrasse jumped through a tiny opening in the tank.... so pods are starting to return. I haven't seen any of the big evil ones .. yet.

[sjfishguy]

I had these things many years ago and they were tearing into a paly colony I had. I soaked the rock in freshwater for a few minutes and tons of them were coming out of the rock and dying. The colony came back in less than a week and I never had a problem again. No doubt in my mind they were eating the live paly's not just the dead ones. And don't worry about being aggressive with freshwater dips with zoos, I have treated zoos for zoopox in freshwater for 20 minutes and never had a problem with them not being able to handle it.

[jprime84]

I had a problem with the red flatworms, and my sixline is fat an happy now. I used to see small pods in the first Few months of my tank but no more. The wrasse and my coral beauty angel are on the prowl all day for them.


100% Crop with Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Macro by jprime84, on Flickr

That's a Regular old nassarius snail next to one

[rcharliesam]

That is crazy
The first video was kind of cool seeing them wrestle over food, but seeing what they're doing in the second video, sucks. Good luck.

[IridescentLily]

I swear to you, the pods will only eat the zoas when they're dying already. Either from too much light or from pests.
I had a MAJOR zoa eating spider infestation.
The spiders are clear, and they only come out at night.
My zoas looked like yours do now. It was because of zoa eating spiders.
Those spiders are ruthless bastards, lol.
I caught 33 spiders with tweezers over the span of a few months. And i killed all the egg sacs over the same period of time. I didn't even know there WERE egg sacs till i found one.
Once i saw one, i knew what to look for and when.
I made a video of them for people because they're so hard to see. They are literally clear. Some are whitish grey, or light tan, but most zoa esting spidets are clear. WAY harder to see than a pod or things like that.
The pods started eating them AFTER the spiders attacked the zoas first. And the spiders are quick. The spiders ate whole colonies in only a couple of weeks. It took 4 months of manual removal.
It was a nghtmare for me, so i vowed to tell as many people as i can about them.

The good thing is I've never seen one since. That was 8 months ago.

[IridescentLily]

Here's two vids of them
In the 2nd video, a zoa eating spider was even hiding under a mushroom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMjIl...e_gdata_player

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ0Ws...e_gdata_player

[cordell]

Thanks for the info and videos, Lily. I'll definitely know what to look for next time I'm checking for zoa spiders. I got some CoralRx in today so I took them out and did a 5 minute dip and then a round of splashing and dunking, but all I could get off were a ton of amphipods.

The reason I pulled them out and dipped again is because for the past 3 days I have been seeing polyps that are wide open dwindling down to a nub and then nothing all within the same day. It is driving me insane!!Almost all of the red zoas are gone and I'm noticing green ones disappearing now, too. Also, every now and then I'll see a zoa polyp floating around like if something had bitten it off near the base where it was attached to the rock.

I'm seriously thinking about moving the zoas into a QT tank and observing them there, after doing another dip to get rid of the amphipods within the colony. I just need to find a temporary light that will make them happy...