So my favorite lunar eclipse and devil's armor zoas are GONE due to amphipods getting to big. I have seen them at work, and I see 5 or 6 in plain sight at one time... I need something to get rid of them. I sucked up a few w/ my turkey baster but I can't get enough. I am thinking about trading in my firefish for a small sixline.... temporarily. I'll catch the sixline later, but I don't want it to kill my breeding pair of cleaner shrimp. Are there any other options?

I was thinking about an orchid dottyback... they are more peaceful than six lines.

TTT

probably some clowns. my clownfish eats some of my pods.

I have 2 clowns and they do nothing...

since the shrimp are already in the tank, the sixline will more than likely leave them alone. at any rate, the risk factor would be the same with either fish you mentioned.

also, the amphipods probably aren't eating your zoanthids, not if they're healthy to begin with.

get the dottyback. wayyy less aggressive.
one thing i dont understand though is why some fish dont eat them...
it just confounds me.

yeah u could probably get the sixline. as that its small. make sure the cleaner shrimp is bigger than the sixline

But I watched them do it. One frag I thought my ricordea was stinging, but I saw the same thing happening to my lunar eclipses that have been growing like crazy. Every time I looked there was an amphipod hanging around it, and today I noticed that 4 of them vanished. I watched, and the pod started eating another.

Would the orchid or the sixline be more aggressive?

Thanks

maybe a mandarin... temporarily... that is.

What about a scooter blenny? My fish store has some eating frozen.

One more bump..

I just posted about this same issue a few days ago. It's heartbreaking to watch as they swarm your colonies

You need something that will aggressively feed. Most fish have a mouth too small to inhale the bugs, so you need a fish that will tear them to pieces. From what I've found out, the scooters and mandarins are too slow and docile for the devil bugs. I've heard that sixlines work sometimes. I just bought a sixline a few days ago and I will say that I do not see the bugs come out till way WAY after lights out. And even then it's only a few here and there. I can actually see my sandbed now . Hopefully my sixline is eating them and not just scaring them. I've lost 1 of my fav paly's and a few zoa frags I made to those demons

I dont understand why your clowns dont eat them, I used to have a maroon clown and he loved them. Are your clowns really small? Have you tried cutting back the feeding? Maybe your fish arent hungry enough to hunt.

Were they healthy frags? Because I had just moved one of the frags and one frag got stung, so maybe they are eating them because they were unhealthy. I have one in a bowl with a really healthy frag of zoas and I will leave it in there for like a week to see if it munches on them...



My clowns are 1.5" long, and I used to feed them every day. I cut back to feeding every other day though, so we'll see how it goes. Now that jeremai mentioned it, I realized that the colonies were being moody lately.

I've lost most of my Zoas and Palys to amphipods. I've watched them attack healthy specimens and actually pull the tentacles out from the closed position one-by-one and devour them. Eventually, the whole polyp is destroyed. Some types they won't touch, though, so its hit-or-miss.

I was going to try a Circus Goby (Priolepis nocturnus), but since I don't have many of Zoas left, and I won't be replacing them, I never followed through. This Goby is nocturnal which is a big plus for hunting Pods, has a good sized mouth for its size and is small enough for a nano tank.

That's terrible!! I'm sorry

give them to me =)

Yes, it is...and thanks. Why Pods turn bezirkers in some tanks and not others...who knows?

However, my new fav's are Acans. If the Pods start messing with them I'm going to nuke the tank with something that destroys all crustaceans and make sure that they never are reintroduced back into my tank.

No shat, i been having the same problem too. I throw a sneak attack on the tank at night with a turkey baster in hand. my clowns aren't eating them either, atleast I do not think they are.

had the same problem. added a clown and everything was fixed.
i dont even see them anymore. funny thing is that i dont see them eat the pods.

My most destructive pods are too big to fit in the end of a turkey baster. They also resist the vacuum force by hanging on with their many legs.

I used to hunt them with a surgical tweezer at night by turning the lights on and grabbing the ones with the 'deer-in-the-headlights' look. I got a few fatties, but after a few nights they got wise...and quicker to escape.

I managed to get 4 big ones yesterday, all at the same time. I had removed a rock to glue down some frags. After about 20 minutes I was done and there the buggers were floundering around at at bottom of the dish I had used. My Acans were very full and happy yesterday

happened to me for sure - caught 1/2" amphipods munching on food pellets also - all around worse then copepods in my opinion - still have a bunch even after putting the six line in but much fewer and only at night so I might try the Priolepis nocturnus Goby?

Yup, that's about the size of my largest.

I'm still looking for one of these little Gobies just to see if they will decimate a Pod population

You could try a different wrasse. I just recently had the same problem in my 46 bow. My zoas closed up and started to recede. I noticed they were constantly swarmed with pods, but didn't really have any other symptoms or issues and everything else around them was thriving. I was gonna get a sixline, as I'd used one before with good success, but they can be a little nasty at times and(more importantly) my girlfriend didn't like the way they look. I decided on a Lubbock's fairy wrasse. Small and cheap like a sixline, but prettier IMO and waaay more mellow. Does fine with my fire shrimp. Within about a week I had trouble even finding a pod and my zoas were well on the rebound. I've read about people using yellow coris wrasse as well. I think most any wrasse would do a decent job of it. FWIW.