Too many Palys and Zoas

[jeremyan7]

Hi all.  i have a 14g IG Peninsula community reef (4 fish, a shrimp, some inverts and a LOT of different colors and types of polyps.  Shrooms, Zoas, Palys, and a few LPS and sps ...  

The problem is the Palys are out growing everything else by 3 - 1.  

So.  What do i do?  Is there is a fish or critter that would eat and prefer palys above everything else? (that can live in 14g).

 

Jeremy

 

[llebcire]

Interesting problem! I've found that less desirable specimens always seem to grow like weeks and the expensive ones don't.

 

Any fish that eats Palys would likely also eat Zoas. Your best bet is to manually remove the ones you don't want and either destroy them or frag to resell or trade. You'll need to scrape the mat from the rocks (fingernails work) and may need to intervene (kalk paste) if they come back.

 

Others may chime in with additional insight.

 

-Eric

[jservedio]

I control my zoas and palys with meaner or faster growing coral. It's hard for them to continue to grow into a dark area covered by an acro or monti cap or to fight off a favia or acan.

 

Pretty much anything will steamroll right over them. If waiting for a monti to crust over or an acan to beat them back is too long, just grab a long set of foreceps (I use the reptile feeding ones), grab a hold of a polyp and start ripping. It'll start pulling up the mat. Pull up as much of the mat as you want and razorblade off where it connects to the rest of the colony if it doesn't just rip.

 

Toss them in the trash or glue it to a plug and sell it, but whatever you do don't boil or eat it.

[Lognor]

Be really careful working with Paly's.  Palytoxin can be very dangerous.  Use gloves, eye protection and potentially mouth protection if working with them outside of the tank.  There's a lot of horror stories in these forums.  You can definitely work with them, remove them, etc, just wear protective gear.

[devaji108]

On 1/15/2020 at 3:00 PM, Lognor said:

Be really careful working with Paly's.  Palytoxin can be very dangerous.  Use gloves, eye protection and potentially mouth protection if working with them outside of the tank.  There's a lot of horror stories in these forums.  You can definitely work with them, remove them, etc, just wear protective gear.

 

I 2nd this, plz do be careful to a bit of research on how to do it before