Well it happened again.....and yet again*updated*

[daniella3d]

It's hard to tell, it could be the palythoas, but this could also be caused by bad bacterias in the water. Anything in the vibrios family. they are very dangerous and cause all sort of disease in coral and humans. Brown jelly is caused by this bacteria and protozoa taking over.

If it was smelling bad, I would say a bacteria because palythoas are gewy and slimy but they don't smell much, but bacterias are extremely smelly.
Just take a breath at the skimmate and you will see

There are definitly a lot more dangerous stuff in the aquarium than just palythoas slime.

It's just hard to visualize everything dying in a tank only due to some palythoas. I have so many in my tank and I frag them and they slime like crazy and never caused any harm to anything. I have a few different types of wild button polyp palythoas that fit the description of the dangerous specie, yet nothing has hapened. I have one that is starting to become quite pretty with a peach center and becoming really huge. It was just brown at the beginning.

Originally Posted by marcingo

Herein lies the problem. We are all calling these zoos. At least the ones I got 3 years ago not sure if they are the same trouble makers were palys from what I know a paly to be. Long stems, bigger heads (maybe just smaller than a dime).

So I would say yes they were probably palys and I incorrectly said zoos.

I dont think they had heavy metals in the system since they came out of an established tank with inverts. I also had the exact same symptoms with all the bristle worms coming out of the rock and dying on the sand bed along with everything else. There was also a bad smell in the water which smelled exactly like the palys before and after I put htem in the tank. I also made sure to put just the rock and corals into my tank and not the water it was transported in.

I guess its truly hard to ever tell what did it but being so close in symptoms its a crazy coincidence that within 7 hrs of the palys being in my tank everything dying.