Zoa Issue

[Cole_Voeller]

Hello all. I started having this issue a while back and have never been able to figure it out. I have a small frag tank where I keep a lot of zoas and a bunch of LPS, and a few SPS. Quite a few of my zoas don’t look as great as they used to. They stretch a ton, and have extremely small stalks. The polyps themselves are extremely small as well, at least compared to how they used to be. For example, I bought an Utter chaos zoa and kept it in a 10 Gal QT tank for a while. Polyps were massive, and zoa was doing amazing. Moved it to the 20 Gal, and over time it has shrunk more and more. Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated!
For parameters, I maintain Alk at around 8.5, 420 Calcium, 1.025 salinity, currently at 10 nitrates, but I usually keep this higher, just did a water change though.
Only things I could guess would be flow, or lighting. The flow in the tank is pretty dang high, but not direct at the zoas. I use a gyre pump below the zoa racks, and two power heads on the opposite top corner, but none of these are pointed at the zoas. The flow in the 10GalQT would be less than in here.

 

[kevgib67]

Stretching is a indication they are not getting enough light. I don’t know if you had stronger light on the 10 gallon or the same light but the tank was shallower. I’m not sure about the polyp size thing. Just a theory but with less light the zooxanthellae isn’t producing enough sugars to feed the zoas.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

to me it looks like they are reaching for more light

 

[Cole_Voeller]

Stretching is a indication they are not getting enough light. I don’t know if you had stronger light on the 10 gallon or the same light but the tank was shallower. I’m not sure about the polyp size thing. Just a theory but with less light the zooxanthellae isn’t producing enough sugars to feed the zoas.

Sorry, forgot to talk about lighting haha. So in this tank, they are getting a ton of light compared to the 10 Gallon. So if there is any lighting issue, it would be that they have too much light, but the zoas appear to be stretching, so that conclusion doesn’t make sense unfortunately. Most are in over 100 par.

 

[Cole_Voeller]

to me it looks like they are reaching for more light

Sorry, forgot to talk about light. They are in pretty high lighting, especially compared to the 10 Gallon.

 

[littlebigreef]

Time and again I hear 'stretching? Move them to higher light!'

I suggest you give them a good feeding of reef roids or frozen food slurry and see what that does for you.

 

[Cole_Voeller]

Time and again I hear 'stretching? Move them to higher light!'

I suggest you give them a good feeding of reef roids or frozen food slurry and see what that does for you.

I’ve tried reef roids in past. I can give them a go again.

 

[Raidensreef18]

Did you ever figure this out ? I have the same issue . I have a dozen
Or more zoa frags that just look the same
As yours . I can’t figure it out and I have found a bunch of vermited snails and usually they’re on the ones that’s bad but also sulfur smell on some and clear slimy stuff . I have over 100 zoa frags but again about 15-20 frags are not what they were .

 

[Cole_Voeller]

Did you ever figure this out ? I have the same issue . I have a dozen
Or more zoa frags that just look the same
As yours . I can’t figure it out and I have found a bunch of vermited snails and usually they’re on the ones that’s bad but also sulfur smell on some and clear slimy stuff . I have over 100 zoa frags but again about 15-20 frags are not what they were .

Mine are looking a lot better now. I ran chemi clean, and used a polyfilter. I also increased lighting. Obviously messing with lights isn’t something I can recommend to everyone. And honestly I still have no idea what was bothering my zoas.