mystery

[atreides]

Hi all

This is my first post, but I have been around this forum for months learning from you guys so first of all, let me thank you for this amazing site and please be patient because English isn’t my first language.

I want to share with you something that has happened to some zoas that I see as a mystery.

It all started when I put a tiny frag stand in a tank that was hosting a bunch of sexy shrimp (by the way, DO NOT DO THAT, big mistake)
For a few days I kept seeing the shrimp all over the zoas 24/7. I did nothing hoping it was just harmless interaction, but I was wrong. First sign were polyps closing then some broken tissue and lashes missing. After that I decided to move the frags to another tank. Slowly, all seem to have recovered, but the mystery lies on one specific kind of zoas, a blue like with yellow center. The hurt polyps seem to also have recovered and are fully opened, but now they look completely different, now they look orange like with a florescent mouth…Has anybody ever seen such a radical change? Maybe is it just a stage in the process to full recovery to the original color? Any ideas?

Also as soon as I figure how/where upload pictures I will show you the whole process of change so you don’t have to rely just on my words.


Thanks in advance

Daniel

 

[Zeppelin]

Daniel

Welcome to Club Zoa.

Larry

 

[Smarsh]

welcome to Club-Zoa. Wish I could help you but I can't. I am interested in seeing the pictures.

Sandy

 

[atreides]

Thank you Larry


Here are the pictures. You can see the damaged polyps and their evolution to a completely different one.

 

[MarvinsReef]

Daniel.. first off, welcome to club-zoa...

the polyp you are talking about that has radically change is a different morph... it is a RPE (Red People Eater)... I can see the RPE's on all the pics so I dunno if that's the polyps you are talking about.. are these before and after pics?

 

[Pufferpunk]

"English isn’t my first language"

You could have fooled me! Welcome!

 

[TyreeUM]

i would say that the small frag just had some red palys on it that were to small to open-not that they changed from blue to red like that

 

[atreides]

Hi guys, thanks for the warm welcome.

I was able to get in touch with the guy I got the bluish zoas from and asked him if he, by any chance, had RPE’s. He told me he did, but due to many fraging/disturbing the colony, he lost it about a month or two ago. Therefore, now my money is on TyreeUM guess. And that new RPE’s growing up and the hurt bluish ones recovering are 2 different things happening at the same time.

I can assure you that when I first got the frag there wasn’t any RPE’s polyps open, not the tiniest. So I guess it is possible to recover a colony from a simple piece of tissue that stayed attached to the rock … and after such a long time. This has really changed my opinion about zoas being weak.