Why do some zoas thrive and others melt away? (zoa pros we need your help)

[bhargs99]

I had trouble with LSOH, too scared to try again... maybe once I get my large system stable instead of my nano I will try again.

 

[steven325]

Nightmares and utter chaos both melted for me.

 

[RichReef]

I can't keep Zoas at all. I can keep anything but ...

 

[Calizoa]

There are many strains of Cyanobacteria that can effect zoas and chemi clean can help with that issue.I use it regularly and hope I don’t lose my LSOH, Illuminati and various other high ends. however I’ve tried a half a dozen purple monster frags but cannot keep them from melting

 

[Biglew11]

I had a bunch melt on me. At the time my phosphates had been bottomed out for a while, I think that may have been the issue.

 

[jetskiwilly]

Pink zoa exploded in my tank… one frag turned into 1/2 sqft in 3 -6 months. Cyano got heavy after some heavy feeding, zoa started to shrink, treated with chemclean and the pink zoa disappeared. No other zoa was hArmed.

 

[fluked]

I have a lot of zoas.. some grow like weeds, others just melt as soon they go in my tank,
I'd say 50% take off and grow like crazy, 30% grow slow, 10% don't change, and 10% just melt

 

[lubeck]

I would be really sad if I wasn’t able to keep zoas. The only ones that have melted are scrambled eggs and another yellow variety

 

[Vagabond]

I'm with everyone that has an issue with Utter Chaos.Beautiful size,color and my 20 or so little colony won't open up anymore,Been like that for about a week and not looking good.

 

[mabner]

I lost most of my zoas and pallys in a house move a few months ago. Apart from a Nuclear Green that's getting leggy and an Utter Caos that's slowly melting, the rest just wittered away, closed up and never opened again.

 

[ggNoRe]

Mine always seem to start out great and slowly melt away. No clue why

 

[i cant think]

I have never tried Zoas in my nano however I have a feeling they’d melt as I did lose a GSP frag. I have however tried Zoas in my 4’ tank and they vanished over night after being in the tank for a couple days.
Here’s one of 3 I’ve tried in the past. Another one of the 3 was a drag of Candy Apple Zoas.

 

[David Groos]

White Zombies. I’ve tried low light, med light, low flow, med flow, etc….. first the skirt folds down, then the crown shrinks… then the quit opening….. looks like they are melting and then slow open with small crowns and the cycle starts again. What’s weird is they have a different color pattern every cycle…..

 

[Simon_M]

I only have two small Zoa Frags and they are at opposite ends of my DT. Not a lot of experience with them (so far) but they seem to thrive and the three small Polyps on each Frag are multiplying rapidly - which I see as a good sign.

Don't Zoas produce toxins which can be harmful to Humans? Perhaps they are also toxic to other nearby Zoa that are not quite the same? I'm always looking to find the cause (and solution) for each problem I encounter - but sometimes it's not obvious. Tomorrow, my DT will "read this" and they will all (consequentially) melt away!

 

[hllb]

I have this happen fairly frequently. I'll put in a frag with a few polyps, it'll grow gangbusters for months - covering entire rocks, with 50+ polyps...and then slowly die out while all the other zoas do fine. No idea why it happens.

 

[hllb]

This was the most dramatic one, though I might know why on this set. These scrambled eggs are nearly gone after growing to this from a frag of maybe 8 polyps. I did heavy peroxide dosing for about 8 weeks and they started disappearing (while others thrived and spread considerably). I still have a few left so maybe they can recover. This photo was from March 24, a few weeks after starting dosing, when it was still at low levels. I was fighting a rare parasite (Myxozoan). I did successfully remove the parasite.

 

[DannoOMG]

My bosses tank has melted a few different kinds. Some stick around.

My personal tank has nothing melting. But I have had Illuminati Zoanthids for almost 2 years and they refuse to grow and I have the same 3 polyps. Everything else in the tank grows.

 

[David Matthews]

I think if asking just from the standpoint of they are already happy and established in my tank then melt and not just from the stress of shipping and acclimation of a new system if I had to take an edjamakated guess I believe at least in my systems (mostly lps tanks i.e. lower flow) I'd say the real reason they start receding initially is probably due to a little bit of detritus build up in a crevice of a rock or something and then ends up getting a bacterial bacterial infection that ends up taking the colony out and like others have said and just like with many other species of corals it can spread to other strains of the same coral or even other corals too. Then it really starts to get scary but knock on wood I've never had too much of a problem. Although as I write this I'm dealing with a bac infection that started out in my stylocenellias and the started on my leptastreas but I think the tide has turned in my favor for this round. Oddly enough the all corals affected started dying from the centers and working it's way outwards of the 15 or so corals it happened to. They all look much better and i haven't seen necrosis in at least a week and a half but fingers still crossed lol. Anyone else ever had this happen or possibly know the culprit?

 

[littlebigreef]

White Zombies. I’ve tried low light, med light, low flow, med flow, etc….. first the skirt folds down, then the crown shrinks… then the quit opening….. looks like they are melting and then slow open with small crowns and the cycle starts again. What’s weird is they have a different color pattern every cycle…..

I don’t trust white zombies, seductions, any of the agaves… they all morph like crazy.

 

[Reef and Dive]

Oompa loompas - the top melter to me!