Found what is eating my zoa's but don't know what it is

[tg1119]

There is something under my zoas that is reaching up and picking at them. I think it might be some type of star fish. It looked like 3 different arms reaching out that are black and white striped and taking bites out of the zoa. These are way to small to get a picture of my an inch long and a little bit fatter than a spaghetti worm. They also look fuzzy but I don't think they are bristle worms. I am doing a iodine dip right now. Does anyone know what they might be? So far I have lost a couple of colonies of zoas to these things I think.

Thanks
Todd

[Ram_Puppy]

well starfish don't have mouths on their arms, so its probably colony of some type of worm if it really is taking bites out.

are you sure it's not just mini-stars eating detrius and excess food?

[tg1119]

They came out in the dip. They were baby bristle stars. It looked as if they were picking at the zoas and the ones that they were picking at were closed up. I Just found them on melev's reef and see that they are good to keep in the tank. I thought I had found the culprits.

[Ram_Puppy]

anything else come out in the dip?

[tg1119]

a bunch of the little tiny snails that come out at night and thats about it.

[Ram_Puppy]

what kind of snails.

if i remember correcly, some pyram snails prey on zoanthids.

i have also heard talk of big fireworms that come out of night and munch zoas down wholesale.

your best bet is to sit up at night w/ a red light and watch.

[Jeff]

asternia starfish will eat zoas, i bought an orange zoa from ace a while back and at least 2-3 times a day i would have to pull a starfish off just that one polyp untill it finally just melted.

[brewercm]

sundial snails will eat them. They are sometimes hard to find because the burrow down into the colony but you may finally see the shell sticking out a little bit. It will look like this.

[Ram_Puppy]

please be cautious following the above link that cliff posted. as soon as I did so my Auto-Protect virus scanner detected and quarantined vbs.gaggle.d infecting two files:

main[1].js
reef_pests[1].js

[Bill S]

Did it to me too...

[brewercm]

Edited the file.
Sorry about that folks, it go my machine at work also and they had to clean it up before I coud get back on. That just sucks that someone would attach a worm to a web page that is normally a good reference.

[Ram_Puppy]

i e-mailed blane so he would no to fix it.. his site is pretty anti-social, i had to dig for 10 minutes to find an e-mail account i could send something to.

[tg1119]

Thanks for all the help. I forget the name of the tiny snails but I was told that they are good to have in your tank. There are some bigger ones that have brown and white markings but do not look the same as a sun dial snail. I check at night time and I will see a bristle worm crawling around in some of the zoas from time to time but none of the ones that are dieing have the worms in them. I have checked on melvsreef and found the zoa predators and do not ever see any spiders or nudis. I check at night time with a flash light.