Zoas thinning, polyps shrinking and color changes

[DSC reef]

I saw the purple puddles but your right, it's missing the pattern. It's cool to have something unique.

 

[Michael Naegeli]

Perhaps those may be Bounty hunter Zoa. Not sure. Kinda close

 

[PDR]

I'm looking to sell some of these zoas once they grow out. What do you think a fair price pp would be for these guys?

 

[BillyReefer]

I don't want to be a game breaker here, but are you really sure it's lighting related?

Before i got my PAR meter, my zoa's where doing the same...i bought them nice and big, and over the weeks they got smaller and smaller.
I checked PAR and some of them were getting only 30 PAR.

You say that the zoa's lit under your kessils are much bigger, how much PAR are they getting, and is it in the same system?

 

[DSC reef]

I'm looking to sell some of these zoas once they grow out. What do you think a fair price pp would be for these guys?

I'd say 10 per polyp would be fair.

 

[DSC reef]

I don't want to be a game breaker here, but are you really sure it's lighting related?

Before i got my PAR meter, my zoa's where doing the same...i bought them nice and big, and over the weeks they got smaller and smaller.
I checked PAR and some of them were getting only 30 PAR.

You say that the zoa's lit under your kessils are much bigger, how much PAR are they getting, and is it in the same system?

Spectrum plays a role too. I've had zoas melt from to little light as well. I'm sure there's other factors that could be at play like nutrients but most of the issues in our tank stemmed from lighting. Anecdotal of course.

 

[BillyReefer]

Spectrum plays a role too. I've had zoas melt from to little light as well. I'm sure there's other factors that could be at play like nutrients but most of the issues in our tank stemmed from lighting. Anecdotal of course.

True, i went more dominant in the blue. But i did a few experiments since then going from full photoperiods of full spectrum, blue only, combined etc and found the best results with 10 hours blue, and a small bit of full spectrum on top of it for half the period.

I also had nutrients reading 0, the biggest improve i saw was since i started dosing. Maybe the topic starter is starving his zoa's out, but there is just enough comming free to keep them half opened.
I'm not sure, as you said there is alot of things. But dosing helped the most for me.

 

[PDR]

@DSC reef I forgot to mention I have this white film growing on most of my frag plugs and LR. I thought it was just film algae but the more I look at it and have researched it, it looks like it might be bacterial, possibly from overfeeding (even though I still don't show n03 or p04).

Any thoughts?

 

[BillyReefer]

This is a sort of algae, that starts with a ch but more i forgot...it shows up in systems that have lack of nutrients. I had the same issue when my nutrients were not detectable.

 

[DSC reef]

Are you carbon dosing @PDR?

 

[PDR]

Are you carbon dosing @PDR?

No. I also do not have a skimmer on this tank, kind of confused how I still show no no3 and p04.

I've been contemplating stopping reef energy, and switching to target feeding 2x a week vs daily broadcast. I'm just thinking maybe I'm doing too much and overcompensating for not having any detectable nutrients. I want to keep things simple.

 

[DSC reef]

Over complicating is easy to do! Lol. Just make the changes slowly.

 

[PDR]

On a completely unrelated note...

This has to be a mistake right?

 

[Michael Naegeli]

They must be perdy proud them utter chaos. Dang!

 

[BillyReefer]

No. I also do not have a skimmer on this tank, kind of confused how I still show no no3 and p04.

I've been contemplating stopping reef energy, and switching to target feeding 2x a week vs daily broadcast. I'm just thinking maybe I'm doing too much and overcompensating for not having any detectable nutrients. I want to keep things simple.

I had the same issue, skimmerless, nomatter what i fed results were non detectable, dosing did the trick for me. Even now, when i stop dosing for exemple nitrate a day or two, the day after i read zero again.

 

[DSC reef]

On a completely unrelated note...

This has to be a mistake right?

Now that's funny!

 

[PDR]

@DSC reef Care to take a crack at this one? (please forgive the algae, it looks worse than it is)



This one is interesting because 1 polyp of it survived for years under a forest of mind blowing palys. I purchased a small frag of it years ago and I think the vendor said there were orange oxides, but it doesn't really look that those to me. What is interesting about these is this is how they look in person under "normal" lighting (kessils at 40% color). The orange on these things puts all my other zoas to shame, even the flaming hornets are not near as bright as these. The tank is nowhere near that blue in person but the zoa colors are spot on.

 

[DSC reef]

I'll have to do some digging. Maybe a morph of mandarins. Spectrum can do funky things with zoas. I'll keep looking.

 

[PDR]

I'll have to do some digging. Maybe a morph of mandarins. Spectrum can do funky things with zoas. I'll keep looking.

FWIW these have always looked like this. That's what drew me to them in the first place.

 

[DSC reef]

FWIW these have always looked like this. That's what drew me to them in the first place.

Got it, I've never seen an orange glow like that.