What makes zoas become darker? Like marbled lavender to My Clementine color.

[dk2nt9]

I have zoa colony of white-lavender color, marbled appearance. In my low tech low light tank it become eventually solid dark violet with orange center, similar to My Clementine. Grows well, too well, no stretching or contacting because of light, and this is a low nutrients tank, dosing them.

What could be a cause of it and can it be corrected?

 

[LiveFreeAndReef]

Not sure if it's something you can "correct", it's just a living animal adapting to its environment

 

[littlebigreef]

They could have been bleached previously and slowly recovered. Zoas run the gamut when it comes to their ability to morph and then how varied each of those strains presents. Ergo a Rasta will always look like a Rasta with no variation whereas a utter chaos can vary wildly. Most commonly morphing can be attributed to both par and spectrum. I’ve had zoas morph based on nutrients as well but that’s more anecdotal.

In your case *if* you want to try and get them to look how they did before you could put them in a higher par area but then realize you might be stressing out the coral. Alternatively, some zoas will bleach in extremely low par (we’ve all lost a frag in our rockwork only to discover it later severely miscolored). Again though, you’re stressing the animal and might lose it.

 

[dk2nt9]

Thank you, this is something I didn't think of. I can divide this colony and place frags in different places, even in sps tank with better light and water chemistry, and see if this changes anything.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Following

 

[Zoa_Fanatic]

I have zoa colony of white-lavender color, marbled appearance. In my low tech low light tank it become eventually solid dark violet with orange center, similar to My Clementine. Grows well, too well, no stretching or contacting because of light, and this is a low nutrients tank, dosing them.

What could be a cause of it and can it be corrected?

Ime lower light=darker colors. Higher light=lighter colored and more colorful. I have CB white zombies in both my tanks. They’re 3” from the lights in my 16G and are almost solid white in the skirt. In my 32 they’re on the sand bed and have a white ring but a lot more red.

Edit: 32G pick is with my lenses, the small frag has no lenses on my camera. Sorry!