Angry zoas

[JennyG]

My two zoas aren’t happy. I’ve had them for a couple weeks and they just aren’t thriving. My other corals are happy (frogspawns, hammer, candy canes, duncan, clove polyps, mushroom).
Alk 9.3
Cal. 440
Sal. 1.027
pH 7.8
Nitrites, nitrates, ammonia all 0.

 

[JennyG]

 

[ColorMeGone]

I would dip them in a Peroxide solution to clean all the algae off. I like a 80% tank water to 20% (3%) Peroxide dip for 3-4 minutes. That should make them Happy again.
Also slowly bump up your nitrates to around 10 and phosphates to .08 - .1.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

All the algae around, and on top of them, is surely making them angry. Peroxide dip as mentioned above,

 

[JennyG]

Thanks, I will try the peroxide dip. What about KoralMD Pro? I have that on hand

 

[Sam7]

Thanks, I will try the peroxide dip. What about KoralMD Pro? I have that on hand

no peroxide....it will kill the algae off.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Thanks, I will try the peroxide dip. What about KoralMD Pro? I have that on hand

I just googled it, its a conditioner for corals, but seems it won't do anything against algae. PEroxide is cheap at the drug store, and it kills algae 100% fast and easy, almost immediate. You can't use it with all corals as it will kill most corals, but zoa's are tough enough to take it.

 

[RedFrog211]

Using a turkey baster to lightly dust off your zoas once a day can really help them thrive, until your algae growth can be fixed, or try putting them with slightly higher flow :)

 

[ShanePike]

That looks like it might be dinos, not algae. Can you confirm? Dinos will definitely cause them to close up, and you're more likely to see dinos in the 0 nitrate/0 phosphate environment that you have.

 

[MeganV]

I agree that that looks like some sort of dinoflagellates and your nutrients are probably contributing to both problems (zoas being angry, and dinos). I am playing around with nutrient ratios right now and have a couple of zoas that are ticked off about it. Some are fine, for whatever reason, but I have a couple that are mad at me.

 

[Renfield42]

Definitely try a peroxide dip. Don’t overdo it, I’ve found some zoas lose a lot of color and are upset for a while. Others bounce right back.

If your nitrates are really zero the zoas probably don’t appreciate that.

If the algae is widespread dealing with that and low nitrate/phosphate at the same time can be a pain. Cleanup crew and manual cleaning are a good start in that scenario.

Zoas are supposed to be super easy to keep but I’ve found that some can be very slow to get established but are weeds once they get happy. Getting the amount of flow they want seems to be more important than the lighting in the beginning, IME.