Zoanthids

I don't know what is going on with my favorite mixed colony of zoas. They are acting strange, they never open fully and look un-happy. I dipped them 2x, once in iodine and another in FWE. Nothing scary came out. There's also no sign of necrosis. My nitrates are at 0, phosphates the same. I don't feed or dose anything. Ca @ 450. I have a Mg test kit and kent tech m coming this week. Thing is ALL my other zoas are doing fine. I even found a sundial snail in my other zoas and they never showed any signs of distress. I have probably a million tiny pods in my system somehow. There are so many they blow around in the water like snow. Could these zoas be getting irritated by them? I don't know what to do.

 

Where are they placed in your tank. I've had a bunch of zoas do similar things when placed in too much light. Moving them lower or sheltered sometimes helps. My Darth maul zoas were like this.

 

Middle. Under the same light they were when i first got them. They used to open up huge and be happy. Like I said All the other zoas are fine.

 

two things can be at play here - #1 could be a pest like nudibranch or zoa spider.
#2 they could need a small amount of food like reefroids.

I had the same issue with some red blasts zoa - I lost 90% - they are now slowly coming back since feeding reefroids - I didn't change anything else.

 

You tank may be too clean. Also I would try moving them lower.

 

Did you target feed? Also how much did you feed and how often? I have been playing with the idea that in my closed loop much of the nutrients/trace elements have been absorbed. I put a 10 wt 6500k led over my chaeto and in one wek it has doubled in growth at least. I meticulously clean the tank every week, vacuum and scrub rocks but somehow the pod population is insane. What are they eating?! I ordered some Mg supplement but the test kits for everything are too expensive, I can't test for every single thing. Maybe I'll get some total reef supplement from brightwells, they have a bunch.

 

Zoas will grow in a toilet...I agree with 2in10 tank might be too clean.

 

Moved to Soft Corals

 

Here's a picture. Notice the crumpled looking polyps. I'm going to stay on this until I find a solution. I will keep updating.

 

once I started feeding 1 a week (180 gal med stocked) they started to come back. Unfortunately my mushrooms exploded too