Edit: Renamed thread from "Zoa Issues" to hopefully maybe attract a little more attention. A couple more polyps disappeared this morning and I'm really worried about the colony.

This past weekend I picked up my first coral - a small zoanthid colony rock. I acclimated them using the drip method, and within a short time they started opening in my tank. By the next day most of the polyps had reopened, and most still appear to be doing well. However, a small subset of them appear to be extremely unhappy - one of this subset (starting yesterday) appeared to be coated in a mucus-like substance - what I believed at the time to be "sliming" (there's a pic below). This morning that entire polyp was missing, torn from the mat more or less completely. Now other polyps around the affected one appear to be showing signs of stress - all are closed, and some have been exhibiting some pronounced "bloating" (see pics). I'm really worried that this will snowball and kill the entire colony. In addition, I have noticed some red "Specks" on the polyps - they are roughly copepod size, but I can't really get a good look at them.

Params:
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - <5
Phosphate - 0
Alk - 9
Calcium - 480
SG - 1.026

The tank is a little over a month old, and has been fully cycled for about 2 and a half weeks. Everything else in the tank (2 tiny occelaris clowns, Cerith, Dwarf Cerith, and Nassarius snails, plus tons of dusters, sponges, worms, pods etc. from my SeaLifeInc rock) appears unstressed and normal. I have noticed some tan and red flatworms on the glass and rocks devouring my pod population, and I have begun to siphon those out. In retrospect, I should probably have done a dip of this frag before I stuck it in the tank, but I was a noob and assumed since there weren't any other corals in the tank it couldn't infect anything. Now I worry about a bacterial/fungal/predator/parasite of some kind making my life miserable for a long time to come.

I am planning on purchasing some Lugol's Iodine tomorrow and doing a dip. I can look into Furan, as well, if people think that might be a better route.

Pics:
1) "Bloated" polyp with small red dots.
2) A couple of the polyps appear to be coated in algae. More red dots, too.
3) Closeup of red dots.
4) Top down view of part of the colony. The gunk on the rock on the top right are what remain of the missing polyp.
5) Part of the rest of the colony. Note red flatworm - I've found a few of these guys and have been siphoning them.
6) Side shot of the tuft of "gunk" where the mucus/slime/??? covered polyp was.
7) Same "bloated" polyps as #1, but "bloating" has changed somewhat over the course of time
8) The initial symptom: translucent mucous-like slime.

how are your polyps doing?

Sounds to me like a few of the polyps were infected from the start.
That's a bad infection too, but some of the polyps look perfectly fine, so I'd say odds of containing it are at least decent.
I'd do a strong lugol's dip for a couple of days in a row.
1 cup tankwater
2 drops lugol's iodine
5 mins

You may hit a point where you have to frag off the bad polyps to save the good ones.

Thank you both for the replies! The polyps are doing a lot better now. On Tuesday I followed the advice in the "Zoa Pests, Diseases and Treatments" thread and did a weaker lugol's iodine dip (3c water, 1 drop solution, using the 4 drops to 1 gallon ratio). The still-living zoas greatly improved, while the obviously "on-the-way-out" ones basically fell apart. Most of the polyps open now, and seem generally much happier than before. I have been noticing a TON of amphipods on them lately, though - they don't appear to be eating them but do seem to be stressing them out quite a bit. I did a second lugol's dip tonight as something of a continuing treatment/prophylactic, this time using 6 drops to the 3 cups of water, the ratio you suggested above. I ended up with about 10 amphipods freaking out and diving off of the rock, so I guess it's something of a two birds with one stone kind of a deal there. The zoas are now back in the tank and starting to open. I will try to keep this thread updated as to how they do.

any updates?

We ended up fragging off the affected ones in an attempt to save them and quarantine them away from the others - I put them on a frag rack in my quarantine tank. None of the frags made it. However, the two remaining "colonies" (really only 5-7 polyps each) appear to be doing well and are unaffected by the plague that claimed the others. I am still seeing a lot of amphipods around them, but while they do cause me some worry they do not appear to be actually doing damage to the polyps.

Update/Revision: Strike what I said about amphipods not doing damage in the last post - in sufficient numbers, these guys can and will eat perfectly healthy soft corals. They are _ravenous_, and as soon as the lights go out they're all over every coral in the tank. Zoas, shrooms, rics, GSP - everything! I bought a sixline today so hopefully my corals won't have to suffer for very much longer.

How are the zoa's? Did the sixline help? I was thinking about doing the same thing the other day. I don't know what happened to my zoa's...they just started dying...i see amphipods all over them, but suspect they aren't eating what isn't already dead.

Mine are crawling all over my zoa but they got used to it and don't even close any more when the amphypods are in the colony. Amphypods love to hide in zoanthids.

I never seen one of my zoanthid being eated by the amphypods but I do have lots of food in my tank so I guess they have enough food and they don't starve to the point they want to eat zoanthids.

I guess any animals will try to eat something not usual instead of starving to death. I have a mandarin now in my tank and still see a lot of these bugs. At night when I close the light and then look with a flashlight, it is a real party all over the place. ton of them are running here and there but none ever ate my zoa.

Maybe you should put a bit of food for your amphypods so that they don't have to eat your coral?

It is hard not to have amphypods in a saltwater aquarium it seem, and any other live form. I now have ton of copopods, isopods, amphypods and my new discovery...lots of mysis shrimp! wow those are wicked fast. And my aquarium as be set up for only 2 months. I can't imagine what I will discover next...Oh yeah...a few aptasia..I have not killed them yet.