zoanthid eating nudi branch

kratos1028

Active member
So i have some of these pests in my tank. Didn't realize they were pests until recently and now they are affecting some of my zoas. Is there a treatment I can use to treat the entire tank to get rid of them that is reef safe? Any fish that eat them? Only a couple of my colonies are affected so I will be treating them tonight but I would like to kill them all in my tank so they don't reinfect the zoas.
 

salt0727

New member
I would dip with coral rx and I have also read that the melanaurus wrasse eats them but I have no first hand experience.
 

hansnfrans

Member
Halichoeres chloropterus (sp?) immediately. They don't ship well so ask a local LFS to order it/them for you. Do not underestimate the zoa nudis. They can quickly mow down your zoas and it is highly likely that there are many more in there than you think.
 

Cubbies

Active member
Do not underestimate the zoa nudis. They can quickly mow down your zoas and it is highly likely that there are many more in there than you think.
+1000! Couldn't have said it better. Last year I had a BC swiped out within days from me noticing them. I lost ALL my Zoanthids in that tank and the tank was mainly Zs and Ps.
 

kratos1028

Active member
What about the other wrasses? Just wanted to add a fish that has nice bright colors. I searched the Halichoeres chloropterus species and don't really like the color on those.
 

jpski25

New member
Took me almost 6 months to kill them all in my first tank. Dipping the Z's and P's only kills the Nudis. You have to manually scrape off the egg sacks or they just keep hatching. I probably caught and killed 200 with tweezers when my lights would come on everyday. The tank was to small to go the wrasse route.
 

jpski25

New member
If you see 1, you have a bunch of them! They turn the same color as whatever zoa they are eating, so they blend right in.
 

kratos1028

Active member
Interesting. I saw a few nudis a few weeks ago that were green. I do have a nice sized colony of green zoas in my tank and there is nothing wrong with that colony. Polyps open up nicely and none of them are shrinking or closed up.

There are a couple other small zoa colonies that aren't opening up properly and I took those colonies out and diped them in H2O2. Found white patches and small white dots. I didn't know I had to manually scrape them off even after the h2o2 dip but I will continue to dip what I think are infected 3-4 times a week.

While I was dipping them in h2o2, some copepods and a couple of small starts came out and died but I didn't see any nudis dead.

Do they only live in the zoa colonies or go and hide in the rocks? if they live in the zoas, I can just take out all my zoas and dip them periodically.
 

kratos1028

Active member
Here is a picture of it. I don't know if the dots are nudi eggs or not. That particular zoa has these white dots and it still opens up just fine. Others have different kinds of white dots on them.

The green zoas on the left with the many tiny white dots all over it is normal for that. I took this pic at night while everything was closed.

 

kratos1028

Active member
How do I treat them?

EDIT: just read the treatment in that link pufferpunk. I will try the furan 2 treatment and see how that goes. Is it better to dose the entire tank or just take the affected zoas out and dose them separately in a bucket?
 

Pufferpunk

New member
There is info in that link I gave you. I also dosed high amounts of vitamin C, in addition to the Furan 2 dips.
 

Lil BamBam

Premium member
This sucks!!! Keep us posted on the results... You are better off treating, than cutting the affected areas..
 

PufferMan

Member
I would highly recommend dipping. Personally, I don't really believe in adding specialized fish to kill pests. Best thing you can do is the following: get some coral rx, dip as many colonies as you can, also inspect them up close while you are dipping and try to pull off any egg sacs with tweezers. You will have to repeat this about once per week, for a few weeks probably.

Also, if you have powerful actinic lights, especially leds, you can spot the nudis using them. Turn off all your lights, so that the polyps close up, then turn on just your actinics, and the little nudis should light up like christmas lights. You can pick them out with tweezers or dip the colonies. It's also worth mentioning, that the nudis store the zooxanthellae from the the polyps they eat in those little tentacles on their back. And those little tentacles will be the same color as the last polyp they ate. So sometimes that helps to figure out where a lot of them are coming from.

Good luck, just stay diligent and keep fighting them!
 

Pufferpunk

New member
Picking them off at night, with a flashlight, is a good idea. I treated the zoapox in a QT with VC dosing at 100ppm & then dipping every day in Furan 2.
 

kratos1028

Active member
It does suck! I just bought some nice new zoas too. The good thing is that only my lower end zoas seem to be affected and the high end stuff looks good but I would rather be safe and take care of it as soon as possible. I don't have strong actinics so I can't use that to help me find them the nudis at night.

I will buy some Furan 2 and start treating them asap. I called up aquarium adventures for Furan 2 and they have for 14$ compared to 6$ on fosterandsmith! I am going to have to order a few boxes online today.
 

kratos1028

Active member
Just ordered 3 furan 2 packets from fosterandsmith. I will start treating them all once I get them. I will use a flashlight and start picking them off. Would a UV light work better?

There are some zoas already growing on rocks and the rest I can take out easily. Should I cut the polyps off that are on the rocks and frag them or discard them?
 
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