sweetyness Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 Too bad you can't have a Mandarin Goby, he would LOVE the pods! Mine is my favorite fish in the tank! It does seem like your pods are bigger and more yellow than mine. I have a 28 gal. Nano Cube with a CPR HOB fuge (3.4 gal) and so far it keeps my Mandarin fed naturally with copepods. I also put 2 small round plastic dish scrubbers (1 in fuge, 1 in DT between rocks) to help keep the pod population up with a place for them to congregate & multiply . Maybe you could put one in a mesh bag hanging/resting by your zoas and scoop out the whole thing with a plastic cup once in awhile to catch the pods if they overpopulate? I am sure your zoas will come back well as long as your water quality is good. To help them, use a baster and feed live phytoplankton like DT's or frozen Cyclopeze- they LOVE that! To FI Candy: I love your cat animated GIF! Are those Siamese? We have 2 7 mo. old boys we just love! Thanks for the laugh And scoobahSAM's adorable puppy!! Link to comment
PaulE915 Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 Dude trap those zoa suckers, bottle em up and ship em out to those less fortunate souls with no pod population! Those things are pretty big tho. My fish go to town anytime pods show themselves in my display. My sump is crawling with them! Link to comment
FlCandy Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 That's not my cat but they look like either siamese mixes or a ragdoll. My kitten Lisa lets me do this to her though! GL with the battle. Link to comment
scoobahSAM Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 Dude trap those zoa suckers, bottle em up and ship em out to those less fortunate souls with no pod population! Those things are pretty big tho. My fish go to town anytime pods show themselves in my display. My sump is crawling with them! Yeah Im a little worried because I just bought an armour of god zoa frag and its sitting at my lfs till im ready on hold. I have a pretty good pod population since I only have the ywg and he doesn't go outside his cave to scavenge.. I might consider doing the dip. And scoobahSAM's adorable puppy!! Thank you!! Shes all grown up now but still a baby baby Link to comment
sweetyness Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Thank you!! Shes all grown up now but still a baby baby ---------------------------------------------------------------- Soo cute, I just want to grab and hug her!! LOL Here's a solution I saw on ReefCentral.com: "lugols or TMpCC would be better than a huge alk swing...pods will keel over and die quickly...fun watching them scurry out...just pull affected colony out put in a bowl of tank water and lugols..mix the lugols and water prior and bam...dead pods" And Link to read all the posts: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1015532 Seems funny since I've been trying to get more in my tank! I'm even going to be buying some to make sure it stays stocked! But luckily they are the small white ones because I have huge zoa colonys. Link to comment
melbell86 Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 i fed some of the dead killers to my tang in another tank I wish i could get a mandarin, he would have been happy in my tank! So far, i havent seen a single pod!! Usually when i turn the light on in the morning the roaches go running for cover, and this morning i saw nothing! Yahoo!! Link to comment
Dani3d Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Yes they will eat zoanthids! I had a huge amphipod problem before I bought my copperband butterfly and I bought him just for that purpose. Now there are bearely any amphipods left and the copperband does not eat the smaller isopods so my mandarin still have plenty to eat. Mandarins DON'T EAT THOSE LARGE AMPHIPODS! and a wrasse is quite useless since it goes to sleep when the amphipods come out...A copperband is active all night long (do they even sleep?). In your case you obviously cannot put any fish in there. I wonder if anyone tried Interceptor to kill those pods? it is supposed to be reef safe for coral and fish but kill all invertabrates including pods?? Might want to look into it. I hate to kill things (I do not even kill spiders) but when ever I see an amphipod I kill it. They are NOT beneficial as they will attack my zoanthids if they are lacking food. If there are only a few it is ok as they do little dammage but when they grow out of proportion it is devastating for the zoanthids. I watched a few of them eat my 3 polyps of purple hornet and I could not do anything as they had already chewed too much of it. The frag was very healthy and growing 2 new polyps The only other solution would be a home made trap. like a margarine plastic container with a cover with small holes large enough for the amphipods to go in and you put pellet food in it (just a little) and a few hours later (after dark of course) then you pull the container out. They will hide in this and be trapped. I have not tried it myself but always wanted to do it before I got my copperband. this makes me feel a lot better! Its good to hear of someone with a similar experience having positive results! I set the little chaeto ball i got right next to the zoa colony under attack, and this morning there were probably about 50+ inside of it. Half of them swam off when i removed the ball, but i got most them in a FW dip. I also dipped the zoa colony and got about 10 more, which is good because there were about 50 last night when i dipped. Im getting a bit more optimistic about my situation Link to comment
typicaltony Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 If anyone wants to get rid of their amphipods, i'll be glad to take them off of your hand. I have a fuzzy dwarf lion that would love you for it. Link to comment
melbell86 Posted November 10, 2011 Share Posted November 10, 2011 Great news, the freshwater dip worked. I have only seen 1 amphipod since the dip and all my zoas are starting to look happy again! The frag that got destroyed has a few polyps that are starting to emerge once more Link to comment
metrokat Posted November 10, 2011 Share Posted November 10, 2011 Sorry for hijacking this thread but.. Just found my emerald crab dead and saw huge amphipods crawling over and around his dead body. Should I take all my liverock out and give them a freshwater dip too? I've also been noticing these other little bugs crawling around at night.. sphaeromatid isopods maybe?Caught one and threw it in some tap water, started twitching and kinda rolled up into a curl. You're fine. Pods are normal for a tank, they problem happens when they grow too large and do not have enough food to ear, then they go after zoas. OP: very happy for you, glad the dips worked out. Link to comment
scoobahSAM Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 check out this little sucker I caught last night! I posted this on the id forum. Anyone want it? LOL Link to comment
Euphyllia Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Read the title expecting at LEAST 1/4" amphipods, but holy crap dude!!! THISE ARE FRIGGIN HUGE!!! thy have to be at least 1/4cm!!! You're screwed!!! Haha, I have pods in my tanks bigger than that. When I find them, I catch them and feed them to my clowns. This thread is funny! Link to comment
surgicalsense Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 My female clown hunts them now, since I have changed up the feeding a bit. Keeping the balance real in my tank. Link to comment
metrokat Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 how do we get a sticky of this in the pest forum? Link to comment
nivekid Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Wow, after reading through this thread I finally figured out why I've never had success with zoas until now. I just added a wrasse. It all makes sense now . Link to comment
melbell86 Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 check out this little sucker I caught last night! I posted this on the id forum. Anyone want it? LOL WOW that thing looks like a large isopod (like the land rolly pollys, aka potato bugs!). SCARY! Read the title expecting at LEAST 1/4" amphipods, but holy crap dude!!! THISE ARE FRIGGIN HUGE!!! thy have to be at least 1/4cm!!! You're screwed!!! Haha, I have pods in my tanks bigger than that. When I find them, I catch them and feed them to my clowns. This thread is funny! umm its not so much the size of them, but the NUMBER of them that were in my tank and with no predators, they got out of control. Most of them measured at about .5-1cm I must have gotten out over 500 that size, and they were eating my zoas . . . how do we get a sticky of this in the pest forum? agreed! Wow, after reading through this thread I finally figured out why I've never had success with zoas until now. I just added a wrasse. It all makes sense now . awesome, i would love to hear your progress! My zoas are growing again and fully out and happy Link to comment
melbell86 Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 So I preserved one of the amphipods i took out of my tank. It measured 1cm (not including its antennae). I took it to the lab I work at just because i was curious to see what it looked like under the dissecting microscope. I snapped some pictures and here they are!! The zoom is in total about 30x. Link to comment
melbell86 Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 Also, here is an updated picture of my zoa frag that got destroyed. A few polyps lived and are now opening! Link to comment
metrokat Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 We need to get Mr Microscope in here. Glad to see the zoas opened up! Link to comment
mp216 Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 Looks like I have the same problem... Photographic proof! The picture is a little fuzzy but I can assure you there is an amphipod munching on the skirt of a formerly glorious polyp. I Just added this frag after rehabilitating my AP12 and it looked great for two weeks until yesterday. Look at it today and bam! caught in the act, in broad daylight. All of the pods in my tank (hundreds of them?) are about 1/8" to 1/4" max. I don't have anything else in the tank other than extremely well established live rock and CUC. The polyp in the picture was doing great like the other ones, and all of my params are perfect. It looks as though they are starting on the polyp on the right as well. Chalk it up to boredom/hunger I guess. I haven't decided if I want to take action just yet but I def will not be adding any more frags for the time being. At least its a cheap frag. Link to comment
metrokat Posted November 23, 2011 Share Posted November 23, 2011 I found a pod on my king midas, that made me mad. So I dipped and they seem okay now. Then I saw a pod on the eagle eyes, that made me mad too. I need a drink, anyone with me? Link to comment
tinkerer Posted November 23, 2011 Share Posted November 23, 2011 this whole thread makes me want to kick my heater to 120 for a week. i see those little bastards running around my scape after they made it home on the LR. Link to comment
Euphyllia Posted November 23, 2011 Share Posted November 23, 2011 So I preserved one of the amphipods i took out of my tank. It measured 1cm (not including its antennae). I took it to the lab I work at just because i was curious to see what it looked like under the dissecting microscope. I snapped some pictures and here they are!! The zoom is in total about 30x. Insufficient. Do you have a x100+ of that? Link to comment
metrokat Posted November 23, 2011 Share Posted November 23, 2011 this whole thread makes me want to kick my heater to 120 for a week. i see those little bastards running around my scape after they made it home on the LR. I'm with you Link to comment
Harpo Posted November 23, 2011 Share Posted November 23, 2011 A while back I had a small plug with ~5 polyps that got flipped in the night. It was top down in the sand for ~6 to 12 hours. The polyps were clearly irritated. I noticed they were contracting in size throughout the day after it happened. I took this video when there where only two polyps left on the frag. The polyps were completely gone after 48 hours or so.... The frag plug itself was very low so it didn't suffer a huge fall from the rock. It was more of a flip into the sand. There's always the chance they were injured, but I think the amphipods simply took advantage of a golden opportunity and attacked their weakened state. Other strains of zoanthid have been untouched, same with another frag plug of the same zoanthid...... Here's video I took of a couple amphipods chowing down on the second night: Link to comment
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