Sea spiders

First time i am hearing about it.

OMG if I saw one of those i would totally freak out.  The one thing I dont like is spiders they give me the willies.....  I can deal with snakes but not spiders.  Hope there are none in my tanks.

i dont know any thing about them but i did read a long time ago in another forum that there not reef safe but whos to say they knew what they were talking about.

Yeah never seen one before, but something that small is usually never alone, and if your tank had been doing well....probably okay. was there any area around the spider that had been affected or dead?

i would drop a depth charge. i know a shoe wont work,

I am only finding white spiders in books. I hope the black ones are the same I also have flat worms in there maybe there eating them instead of my Zoas...   Wish full thinking.  I am so glade it in my kids room and not connected to my 400 gallon system. Thanks for your help

your welcome

google "zoa eating spiders"...i've come face to face with them!  they are TERRIBLE creatures!  they look like aliens!!  and they will eat your zoas before you know it...they suck them to nothing from the inside out.  if you found one, there are probably more.  freshwater dips help.  mostly you just have to keep an eye out and dip ANY colony that starts to look funny, or it will be gone in no time.  they lay the eggs inside the polyps too, so it's REALLY hard to get rid of them.  but it can be done!  just no "sure cure" for it other than lots of dips over a long period of time.  sorry you have this. i had NEVER seen one in person...only ever read about them, and then i got some blue hornets from a store i'm not going to name, cause it wasn't there fault, and they were in the WHOLE colony of blue hornets that they got in.  ALL of theirs died, and all of mine died, along with A LOT of my other zoas...it was REALLY flippin annoying to get rid of, but hopefully you don't have many more!  good luck!

Thanks reefsurgeon..  I am not the only one to see these beasts in person. I have been looking and fragging all the zoas in that tank and nothing else so far but I have a long ways to go. Hopefully There was only one. 

Thats wack! good luck dude. thanks for the info.

DR. Reefs. saves the day again. You kick ass girl!

hehe!  thanks kev (getin)!  they are annoying little buggers.  if there is one, there is usually more.  i hope that in your case you caught the only one, but just in case, here is some more info. 

i have read and noticed that they actually tend to prefer certain types of zoas than others.  i believe that many people have had the biggest losses when it comes to the People Eater families...That's what I read, anyhow...i don't have an PEs, so all I know is that they devoured my blue hornets, and a lot of my multirock that had eagle eyes, radioactive dragon eyes, green bay packers and a couple others.  the regular dragon eyes are fine, but the ENTIRE rest of the rock was wiped out.  REALLY weird!  I found ONE on one of my Lemon Glaciers (it ate the one polyp i found it on...i was pissed cause i'm growing those out and they go for $50 per polyp or more!  lol), and I found ONE hiding in the chunk of super glue that was used to glue my Emeralds of Fire to the disk at the store that gave it to me.  I removed the whole frag from the disk, pulled as much superglue off the chunk as i could, left ass little caves or holes in the glue for them to hide in, and glued it back to the disk.  that was a while ago and it's why i put my fragging and selling of my zoas on hold.  didn't want to risk ANYONE EVER having to deal with these because of anything they bought from me.  things look fine now (knock on wood), so i'm opening up shop for zoa frags for sale again (hint hint...nudge nudge...heh). 

anyhow, the BIG ones like to hide DEEP INSIDE the rocks.  i have read that some people rid there tank of spiders with dips of 1 part peroxide 3 parts RO water.  i also read about someone using epsom salt to mix with RO water to whatever specific gravity you have in your tank, put the colonies in and let them soak for 5-15 minutes.  it doesn't kill the spiders, but it apparently stuns them into letting go of the polyps and rocks, so blasting them with a small powerhead to get all the leftovers that didn't just fall off is what he said he did.  the guy did it every three days until he stopped seeing spiders falling out, and then another few times after to make sure.  i personally was afraid to try either of these methods...if i ever had to do it again, i would use the epsom salt method since it is just magnesium sulfate, so it shouldn't kill the zoas...
what i did when i had them was freshwater dip the colonies that even looked funny, and just take tweezers and something to scrape away at the rock to get underneath in case there are any big guys hiding out.  the smaller ones are REALLY hard to find and see...here are some pics to give you an idea...mind you, these are REALLY nice cameras that can catch ANYTHING in a picture and blow it up...they look even scarier all blown up!  lol!

Girl! There u go taking all my thunder away with the question answering. Glad to see that your on top of things too. :) I think between the two of us, we should own sea world or something.

heck yea i'm on top of things!  gotta "tighten up" as the mastermind says!  spreding the knowledge around one post at a time!  hehe!  and i do agree, that between the two of us, we could make something even better than sea world!!  well...we would probably have to win the lottery first...so when one of us wins the lottery, let's work on that!  lol! 

Nice pictures. Mine was on palythoas so hope fully they like them and not Zoas