390G Zoanthid & SPS Reef System

[Zoaelite]

Originally Posted by Stones

I just finished reading through your entire build thread and I tip my hat to you sir! Phenomenal looking tank and you've got some serious mad photo skills.

I've got a question for you though that I didn't see come up in your build thread anywhere. Are you dosing anything to get such good growth out of your zoas and palys? I see you are running a vertex calcium reactor but are you adding anything else or running some sort of ULNS in addition? Do you regularily feed your zoas/palys any sort of of food like reef roids or reef chilli?

I've been trying to add zoas and palys to my strictly SPS reef for over a year now and they never seem to do well. Always start slowly shrivelling up and withering away shortly after adding them. Any tips would be appreciated seeing as you have a very similar setup to what I'd like to achieve.

Well first off, thank you for the encouraging compliment always nice to see others enjoy what I'm passionate about. Species from the order Zoantharia have a REALLY variable rep when it comes to husbandry, some people can put them in a 10g with practically no equipment or time and have massive success while others spend $1000's of dollars and countless hours and still fail completely. Would be nice to see the general "Newbie" coral description tossed aside as there is a great deal of variability in keeping them.

While many believe these corals rely heavily on the symbiotic relationship between them and their photosynthetic dinoflagelletic zooxanthellae I tend to disagree. Although this relationship provides a great deal of the energy required for homeostasis and is essential for the corals well being the pathway lacks fundamental elements required for life. Mainly photosynthesis lacks the ability to form essential proteins and lipids, these compounds are biotic in nature and must be taken in to sustain life.

Being a big believer in evolution and identified the fact that every species from the order Zoantharia has an oral slit, at least one siphonoglyph, prey capture tentacles with nematocytes and a coelenteron leads me strongly in the direction that these animals do in fact eat.

So what's on the dinner table for our little Cnidarian friends?

I have experimented with a wide variety of food sources and had variable success through out. If I can sum up my experience it's that an extremely diverse food is required as the order itself is extremely diverse. Larger zoanthids such as any of the "People Eaters" (Commonly mislabeled as People eater "Palys" the species is actually Zoanthus gigantus), similar larger morphs and many of the true paly species will readily accept large meaty food such as Brine shrimp. Smaller morphs will not accept meaty food and require smaller particulate, in general foods like reef roids, reef chili, oyster eggs and DOM in solid fish waste works wonders.

I usually feed the corals nightly around 9:00-10:00 pm when the lights are just going out, fish are fed at the same time to keep them away from the polyps. Due to the size of the tank I tend to broadcast feed my mixture and keep my pumps on feed mode for around 30 minutes. One untrue statement I always come across is that zoanthids prefer "Dirty water" (That is water that has high levels of Nitrate, Nitrate and Phosphate), my system runs @ zero NO3/ NO2 with near zero levels of phosphate. A system that has clean water with a high level of organic particulate and the ability to remove excess dissolved nutrients is key to success here.

The major problem you will personally run into is that SPS and Zoanthids have very different care requirements, you need to fine tune your system to be as low nutrient as possible while maintaining a high level of feeding. Your SPS will also benefit from increased food matter in the water but will respond to excess nutrients by browning out. Finding this pivotal balance is tricky but once it's achieved it makes for one stellar looking tank!

Hope that helps,
Levi