Zoa's disappearing but SPS growing?!?

[heylauren]

Slowly my zoa colonies have been shrinking... But at the same time my lps and sps colonies are doing great...

What could be the problem? I have a couple of pretty big hermits.

All params in check, fish in check. 120g with 70g sump, plenty of lr.

Fish are
Naso tang
Blue tang
six line wrasse
melanurus wrasse

Tons of asterina stars, small snails of all sorts, and some big hermits.

 

[jcdeng]

"Tons of asterina stars", maybe thats why

 

[pkane11384]

+1 on the Asterina's. Get yourself a Harlequin Shrimp

 

[basiab]

There are some types of asterina that are bad. See some threads on it. But my guess would be allopathy is the problem.

 

[empire]

 

[turbotone]

nudibranches?

 

[SteveZ15]

That Haplened To Me Every Once In A Wile I Stirr The Sand Near The Zoas So They Get Some Food It Seems To Be Working.But Ger Rid Of Those Stars Go At Night With Flashlight You See Them On The Bottoms Of Zoa colonies

 

[NYreefNoob]

10 yr's of keeping zoa's i have never seen a asteria eat a healthy zoa. animals will go outside their nornal range of food if something isnt healthy, personally id look for nudi's. and i have always noticed out of the blue zoa's would melt off while the rest are doing great

 

[Rob&Gab]

10 yr's of keeping zoa's i have never seen a asteria eat a healthy zoa.

i have not seen it with my own eyes. But some people i know who keeps zoas, theres are healthy as can be. and there stars were chomping away.

 

[viplok]

nudibranches?

^ nailed it. check for it

 

[qy7400]

Another predator not mentioned is zoa spiders... had these guys a few years ago.

 

[jgraz]

I'm betting on the asternas. They were decimating my zoas. It's the little blueish ones that seem to be the problem. These were nice and fat healthy polyps by the way. I've been pulling almost nightly for the last couple of weeks. Any asterna I find gets a tan under the lights. I often found them completely wrapped around the polyp. Pull off the star and there's the eaten polyp.

 

[NYreefNoob]

get a harliquin shrimp if you have asteria problems.

 

[Moneymaks24]

Houdini zoas perhaps.