I have more than 30 different types of zoas in my tank. They all seem to be doing well, growing and adding polyps regularly. A few of my local buddies also have several types of zoas (one friend having more than 100 types), and theirs seem to do similarly to mine. All of our tank parameters are similar, we use the same salt and, while we all use different lights, we keep our zoas at similar PAR levels (80-120).
On Saturday, one of my friends and I took a little road trip to hand pick a few zoa frags from a guy about 90 minutes away. When we got there, we were floored at the size of the polyps in his tank. Everything in his tank looked great. Nothing was "reaching" for light, color was good, but the polyps were HUGE! I have GMK in my tank. They've done really well for me. They look great and I'm getting new polyps pretty regularly. If my GMK polyps are the size of a dime, I swear this guy's GMK polyps were the size of a quarter or larger! He had his frags on 3/4" frag plugs, and a single polyp covered the entire plug! And it wasn't just the GMKs... Other stuff he had that I also have were consistently the same. His polyps were 3-4x larger than mine.
His tank was an 80g Deep Blue frag tank lit by two XR15s and two T5 bulbs. He said the Radions were only running about 40-50% power and the T5s ran for a few hours a day. I asked what sort of PAR his stuff was in with that configuration, but he's never bothered to check. From looking at the tank, I'd say the PAR is pretty low but, again, nothing was stretching. Everything looked GREAT.
It got me thinking about a recent visit to WWC in Orlando. One of the many things that struck me about that visit was the polyp size on the zoas that WWC has in their 1200g LPS lagoon. I'd never seen anything like it (until this last Saturday) in anyone's home tank. I've been doing some reading and WWC says that some of the LPS in that tank are in 50-60 PAR. Again, nothing was reaching, everything looked amazing, but the zoa polyps were huge.
So is that the secret? Is it just lower light that maes the polyps so big? When I had my little counter-top tank setup there were a few corners with lower light. Some of the zoas I had in there had some pretty large polyps (nothing like the ones I'm talking about), but mostly they just "stalked up" reaching for light. Maybe lower PAR and longer photo periods keep the stalks down but boost polyp size?
I kind of want to do an experiment and lower the lights in my tank a bit. I have it setup now so that I have an even 80-85 PAR on the entire sandbed (where my zoas are), but nowhere in my tank is really over 125 PAR for my LPS. Lowering it to 65-70 PAR on the sandbed would still keep me well within range for everything else in my tank. I am also in the process of setting up a frag/growout system for zoas, so now I'm rethinking my lighting for that tank too.
Have any of you noticed anything like what I'm describing? What PAR are you keeping your zoas in? are your polyp sizes inline with what you see in others' tanks?
On Saturday, one of my friends and I took a little road trip to hand pick a few zoa frags from a guy about 90 minutes away. When we got there, we were floored at the size of the polyps in his tank. Everything in his tank looked great. Nothing was "reaching" for light, color was good, but the polyps were HUGE! I have GMK in my tank. They've done really well for me. They look great and I'm getting new polyps pretty regularly. If my GMK polyps are the size of a dime, I swear this guy's GMK polyps were the size of a quarter or larger! He had his frags on 3/4" frag plugs, and a single polyp covered the entire plug! And it wasn't just the GMKs... Other stuff he had that I also have were consistently the same. His polyps were 3-4x larger than mine.
His tank was an 80g Deep Blue frag tank lit by two XR15s and two T5 bulbs. He said the Radions were only running about 40-50% power and the T5s ran for a few hours a day. I asked what sort of PAR his stuff was in with that configuration, but he's never bothered to check. From looking at the tank, I'd say the PAR is pretty low but, again, nothing was stretching. Everything looked GREAT.
It got me thinking about a recent visit to WWC in Orlando. One of the many things that struck me about that visit was the polyp size on the zoas that WWC has in their 1200g LPS lagoon. I'd never seen anything like it (until this last Saturday) in anyone's home tank. I've been doing some reading and WWC says that some of the LPS in that tank are in 50-60 PAR. Again, nothing was reaching, everything looked amazing, but the zoa polyps were huge.
So is that the secret? Is it just lower light that maes the polyps so big? When I had my little counter-top tank setup there were a few corners with lower light. Some of the zoas I had in there had some pretty large polyps (nothing like the ones I'm talking about), but mostly they just "stalked up" reaching for light. Maybe lower PAR and longer photo periods keep the stalks down but boost polyp size?
I kind of want to do an experiment and lower the lights in my tank a bit. I have it setup now so that I have an even 80-85 PAR on the entire sandbed (where my zoas are), but nowhere in my tank is really over 125 PAR for my LPS. Lowering it to 65-70 PAR on the sandbed would still keep me well within range for everything else in my tank. I am also in the process of setting up a frag/growout system for zoas, so now I'm rethinking my lighting for that tank too.
Have any of you noticed anything like what I'm describing? What PAR are you keeping your zoas in? are your polyp sizes inline with what you see in others' tanks?