Eliminate/reduce invasive zoa population

[choff]

Hello,

I have a small issue with these green zoas spreading quite fast in my tank. They are not a problem yet, but I foresee issues in the very near future. They have over taken at least 1 colony of zoas in my zoa garden and are not threatening 3 others.

I have 2 infestations, 1 in my zoa garden and another on the opposite side of the tank where a frag of them fell behind a crevice and have now grown out of the crevice and spreading their too.

If I manually remove them, what is the danger of them releasing anything into the water column that will impact my predominately SPS filled tank?

Anyone have suggestions for removal? Please note if you are speaking from experience or what you've read. I'm fine with either, but helpful to know where you are coming from. I have done some research, but not a ton yet and wanted see if you folks had any ideas.

Thanks!

 

[Bagdis831]

There are a number of options that you can do to try and slow the growth or remove some polyps. You could try to frag the invasive zoas and glue them to frag plugs, use a new sharp razor blade to remove them from the live rock (wear gloves and goggles to avoid the toxins) You can also try to kill the polyps off with some aptasia-X (turn off all flow and let the stuff sit there a while, this will probably take multiple attempts to start kill off the polyps. You could also try covering the polyps with small pieces of live rock with eventually cause the zoas to close up and die off (they may also encrust on the pieces of rock to be fragged later). Hope that these suggestions help.

 

[choff]

Thanks Bagdis, I ended up pulling the 1 Rock section off and scraped those puppies off. Rinsed well with tank water and back in with no harm to the few corals on it. That was the easy side.

One note, ORP dropped 60 points when I put the rock minus 100+ zoas back in the tank. There was some residual slime, but not a significant amount and the dt was a little hazy for about 30 min. None of corals looked stressed.

Now for that fallen frag side on rocks I can't pull....

 

[Patsjunk54]

If it happens again I'll take the Zoas lol


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