Keeping Zoas???

[dacookster]

I've always had ups and downs, but this past year I had zoa eating nudis. The worst part was the nudis disguised themselves as the zoa colonies they feasted on so I could barely ever see them. I warmed up some ro water and dipped and shook all my zoa rocks for about 2 mins and once the zoas recovered from the dip, their growth rate doubled. It was kinda cool cause you could see all the poor nudis at the bottom of the bucket. Some were a cm in length and were coloured exactly like a watermelon zoa. I have noticed better growth with adding Kent phyto and zooplanktons.

[daniella3d]

Welcome to the club, we've got T-shirts!

This is very typical of some zoanthids, especially the smaller ones like the zoanthus sociatus. They seem to have a buffer where they can thrive and then when this is gone they waste away.

Some never do this, especially the larger paly that accept food. I never ever had a problem with the rainbow, pink and gold (immortal) and armaggedon for exemples. They eat, they do great. I never had one of those melted away, even when I had copper poisoning.

Vitamine C does help the smaller sociatus, but it is still difficult to keep them long term. The one millon $ question is why they do this? nobody knows. They could be lacking nutrient, plankton, not sure. Once they decide to waste away, there is rarely any return.

Dipping them in 3% peroxyde at 1/3 peroxyde and 2/3 tank water for 2 minutes often help.

Good luck, they are sensitive to any shift in the water parameters, and very sensitive to any heavy metal. I once dosed a bit of iron and magnaneese as recommanded on the bottle, and immediatly lost 3 colonies.

[Zoaelite]

^^^
Resident Zoa expert hit the nail right on the head, couldn't of said it better myself.