Zoa Id

Mashkoor

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Bought this without names .. what are these called

#Zoaexperts #zoaworldproblems

9520F658-CC67-4F1D-B25B-52BFA583D5A2.jpeg 109D48F3-D5A0-4115-A368-8A73CE976351.jpeg EF8CD2C4-4258-4EE7-B635-CA98099BDCDA.jpeg
 

footgal

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1- daisy cutters (usually have more white than stargazers/pinwheels but they do morph whiter in high light)
2- clementines with white specks (likely a morph from high lighting, I think it looks awesome)
3- stargazers/pinwheels

There's not much of a difference at all between daisy cutters, stargazers, and pinwheels; just the originating source. Stargazers and Daisy Cutters are Jason Fox. If you were to ever sell them, I would call them Pinwheels just because the other two you technically should have a lineage but I don't think many people care about that with zoas less than $100 a polyp. Beautiful pieces, very healthy looking!
 

littlebigreef

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I understand the desire to organize and categorize new zoa acquisitions. That being said, given the size and disposition of the frags those are just wild un-named zoas that were imported and chopped up. Now, it's a question of specificity. Can we put names on them? Sure. But with the understanding that they're in a group ( or bucket) and that they're not a specific thing. You do this based on certain immutable traits.

The first one has more in common with blow pops than anything else- yellow/orange mouth, white/blue center, and green skirt. It's a nice example, it might have been named something somewhere at some time but nothing immediately comes to mind. I'd call it a blow pop and a day.

The second one is not a clementine. Clementines are a somewhat smaller zoa (think rasta) and do not morph. The center and skirt is far brighter and more well defined. The purple is a deeper shade.
IMG_4665.jpg

Examples like the second one are pretty common and often get called false clementines or dropped into a larger bucket of creamsicles or even bigger fire and ice. Fact is those are common to the point they're usually just called assorted zoas. That shouldn't diminish them in any way but clementines they are not.

The third zoa I agree with dropping them into the dasiy cutter/stargazer/pinwheel bucket. There's no conventional difference with those names now - feel free to google. But it brings up an interesting talking point. At one point pinwheels were indeed a different strain, this one has been floating around for a decade or so.
DC3FA260-7900-4BCE-9A5F-4DC73455C726.JPG

But because of the loose and interchangeable application of names led to the above strain being wall-papered over and now we have three names for the same group of green, blue and white-speckled zoas.

At the end of the day the request for ID might just be for your own satisfaction but I always encourage people to google the hell out of something if they're looking to resell. Better yet, look around on Instagram so you're seeing (for the most part) untouched up examples of the zoas in question.
 

Zoa_Fanatic

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I understand the desire to organize and categorize new zoa acquisitions. That being said, given the size and disposition of the frags those are just wild un-named zoas that were imported and chopped up. Now, it's a question of specificity. Can we put names on them? Sure. But with the understanding that they're in a group ( or bucket) and that they're not a specific thing. You do this based on certain immutable traits.

The first one has more in common with blow pops than anything else- yellow/orange mouth, white/blue center, and green skirt. It's a nice example, it might have been named something somewhere at some time but nothing immediately comes to mind. I'd call it a blow pop and a day.

The second one is not a clementine. Clementines are a somewhat smaller zoa (think rasta) and do not morph. The center and skirt is far brighter and more well defined. The purple is a deeper shade.
IMG_4665.jpg

Examples like the second one are pretty common and often get called false clementines or dropped into a larger bucket of creamsicles or even bigger fire and ice. Fact is those are common to the point they're usually just called assorted zoas. That shouldn't diminish them in any way but clementines they are not.

The third zoa I agree with dropping them into the dasiy cutter/stargazer/pinwheel bucket. There's no conventional difference with those names now - feel free to google. But it brings up an interesting talking point. At one point pinwheels were indeed a different strain, this one has been floating around for a decade or so.
DC3FA260-7900-4BCE-9A5F-4DC73455C726.JPG

But because of the loose and interchangeable application of names led to the above strain being wall-papered over and now we have three names for the same group of green, blue and white-speckled zoas.

At the end of the day the request for ID might just be for your own satisfaction but I always encourage people to google the hell out of something if they're looking to resell. Better yet, look around on Instagram so you're seeing (for the most part) untouched up examples of the zoas in question.
Dont all zoa morph based on light? Honest question.
 

littlebigreef

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Dont all zoa morph based on light? Honest question.

Totally fair. It's been my experience over the years that many z's and p's have the capacity to morph to varying degrees based not only on light (both intensity and wavelength) but also on alk, temperature and perhaps nutrients as well. That's why when categorizing and ID'ing stuff its important to look at mutable and immutable (for lack of a better word) traits. It also doesn't hurt spending a lot of time working with them across shops and vendors to establish a baseline as to how something 'should' appear... and I'm not talking about what we find in google images.

That also broaches the conversation of specificity. Some of this stuff can all go together in a 'bucket' - ie dragon eyes, fire and ice, gorilla nips, creamsicles, darth mauls, blow pops and Hawaiian PE - for example. You can see a wide range of subtle differences that don't really warrant another name because their key distinguishing characteristics are all the same. To what degree this is tied to environmental factors is anyone's guess since they don't collect this info when stuff is pulled off the reef. However, there are a number of z's & p's that display consistently across aquariums regardless of aquarium parameters or where they were collected in nature. As I mentioned before Clementines don't 'wholesale' morph from my example to the one provided by the OP. The size and colors are simply too different. Now, it is wholly normal and common for some slight changes -ie losing color on a skirt or fading of a color- to occur. But it's also normal and common to be able to reverse those changes. For example I recently concluded my gold maul only colors up properly in alk at 10+, and that's after having that strain for 5 years.

In short, do all zoas morph? My answer is that it's a sliding scale for each of what we subjectively identify as different 'strains.'
 

littlebigreef

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Have you found a correlation of how alk affects the zoa morph? (Example: if higher/lower alk causes darker colors, larger polyp etc) Very curious about this! :)

Out of a sample size of about 200 strains I’ve only really noticed a difference with red and gold mauls. To that end they’re more ‘colored up’ and the pattern is appearing more broken. I’m pragmatic about asserting stuff so at this point I’d defer until I have a little more time and info. However, I know not only alk, but also nitrates and phosphates are incredibly important to our ‘stick head’ friends across the aisle in order to get their tenius (Disney and homewreckers) to color properly.

It’s my working opinion that size is tied more to light intensity (or lack there of) and wavelength. Cardinal rule of biology is that ‘form follows function.’ We’ve all see zoas pan for light and common wisdom is to ‘move it up.’ It’s more likely the zoa is panning because it’s not getting light in the right wavelength. Most LEDs try to pack a wide spread of light into their diodes and then you can program from there and try to hit the right spots in the spectrum, in a black box ‘you get what you get.’ T5’s on the other hand allow you to choose where you want to be and how much par. From practical experience an array of T5’s in the 400+ nanometer range (UV) (Blue plus, purple plus, actinic) will yield larger polyps that don’t display ‘panning,’ (despite low par) and are also better able to capture food (in my case phyto, reefroids) out of the water column. Fat corals are happy corals. Happy corals are more robust. I’d suggest looking into SB Reef lights which are built around this principle.
 

RedFrog211

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Out of a sample size of about 200 strains I’ve only really noticed a difference with red and gold mauls. To that end they’re more ‘colored up’ and the pattern is appearing more broken. I’m pragmatic about asserting stuff so at this point I’d defer until I have a little more time and info. However, I know not only alk, but also nitrates and phosphates are incredibly important to our ‘stick head’ friends across the aisle in order to get their tenius (Disney and homewreckers) to color properly.

It’s my working opinion that size is tied more to light intensity (or lack there of) and wavelength. Cardinal rule of biology is that ‘form follows function.’ We’ve all see zoas pan for light and common wisdom is to ‘move it up.’ It’s more likely the zoa is panning because it’s not getting light in the right wavelength. Most LEDs try to pack a wide spread of light into their diodes and then you can program from there and try to hit the right spots in the spectrum, in a black box ‘you get what you get.’ T5’s on the other hand allow you to choose where you want to be and how much par. From practical experience an array of T5’s in the 400+ nanometer range (UV) (Blue plus, purple plus, actinic) will yield larger polyps that don’t display ‘panning,’ (despite low par) and are also better able to capture food (in my case phyto, reefroids) out of the water column. Fat corals are happy corals. Happy corals are more robust. I’d suggest looking into SB Reef lights which are built around this principle.
Wow! That’s amazing! I currently have an AI Prime over my nano, and I’m happy with the results! You can see the difference in the zoa from when I first got it (whiter light) and 1.5 month later (bluer). Although the last is blue, so obviously the colors pop more, the green on the skirt and black around the mouth were practically nonexistent when I first received it. Next, I’m hoping to introduce more flow to help get the longer skirt :)
 

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