Ball anemones destroyed my zoas?

[SaltyBuddha]

My zoa colony has been on the decline for a couple of months. I assumed it was due to some other issues in the tank, but now I am not so sure. I found at least 5 ball anemones within the zoa colony. Most people say they are reef safe but I did see a few accounts of them causing harm. I also have a ton of these straight hydroids. They haven't seemed to bother anything up to this point though.

 

I do not see any pox, nudibranch, spiders or eggs. 

 

My thoughts at this point are to do a Coral RX dip and aiptasia-X the ball anemones. I really don't want to kill them because they are really pretty, but at this point I don't know what or who the culprit is.

 

Thoughts?

 

Ball Anemones & Hydroids

 

Hydroids

 

[Clown79]

I don't know. The ones I have are everywhere and next to corals and the corals are fine.

[SaltyBuddha]

17 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

I don't know. The ones I have are everywhere and next to corals and the corals are fine.

At this point, I think I am going to just dip and see if anything comes up. Hopefully the ball anemones survive. 

[seabass]

15 hours ago, SaltyBuddha said:

Most people say they are reef safe but I did see a few accounts of them causing harm.

I think there is a good chance that they are irritating your zoanthids.  Everything is fighting for space, and there are winners and there are losers.

 

IDK about calling them reef safe or not reef safe.  When you consider some other corals that we purchase, many of them will do worse than irritate their neighbors; yet we wouldn't call them not reef safe.

 

If it were me (and if I cared about the zoas), I'd probably try to get rid of the anemones. 

[SaltyBuddha]

11 hours ago, seabass said:

I think there is a good chance that they are irritating your zoanthids.  Everything is fighting for space, and there are winners and there are losers.

 

IDK about calling them reef safe or not reef safe.  When you consider some other corals that we purchase, many of them will do worse than irritate their neighbors; yet we wouldn't call them not reef safe.

 

If it were me (and if I cared about the zoas), I'd probably try to get rid of the anemones. 

Thanks for the confirmation. The anemones were fully extended early this morning even after the dip. I made the decision to use some Aiptasia X on them. 

 

I've seen a few isolated reports of people saying they are harming their zoas. 

 

I've already lost more polyps than I can count and I wanted to remove any variable.

[HaloPhenom27]

Not sure if this matters but Zoas are colonial anemones themselves. 

[Tired]

If any more show up, it may be worth trying the various anemone-annoying methods to get them to detach. Then you could relocate them away from your zoas and still have them.