What are you doing to keep your zoas and palys healthy and growing?

[IPisces]

I would like to know what everyone is doing to keep their zoas and palys healthy and growing.
What are you feeding? What kind of lighting are you using? How often are your water changes? Are you dosing any elements?

 

[ak_reefer]

Hey Lorrie, I feed my tank as a whole twice a week with Phyto feast and oyster feast. I am now running LED's (3 weeks now) but before that I was running a 4 bulb T5 Tek 5 unit. I am waiting to see what effect the new lighting has on growth but my Watermelons and Red UFO's are taking off. My Gobstoppers are not the fastest growers the rest of them are growing at a nice rate. I do a 15/20 % water change every two weeks and I do not dose anything.

 

[senji]

i feed my coral coral frenzy 1nce a week, im running led lights, i dose brs 2 part bi weekly as needed and magnesium 1nce a month as needed. and my 90g i only use kalk and magnesium. i do 20% water changes as needed as well about 1nce a month or so. all my zoas including gobstoppers grow very fast. but the polyps are small but get large if i stop feeding for a week then i resume feeding.

 

[IPisces]

I feed coral frenzy also. I also feed phytoplankton, frozen cyclopeze, zooplex, amino acids & vitamin c. My zoas are in my sps tank, so I also feed sps grow once in a while and I doze kent marine tech CB daily. Water change every 3 weeks. I am running Ecoray LED's which I really like the color from them on most all my coral. I have some zoas that I have had for over three years now. They have been growing very well. Some of them though grow really slow and some I have grown real fast and then overnight melted away.

 

[Gazbo]

I have a mixed tank and will admit when it comes to feeding filter feeders I can do better maybe every 3 weeks and its a combo of marine snow, coral frenzy, brine shrimp and phytoplankton. I do water changes about every 3-4 weeks and run a calcium reactor and then I dose Trace Hard and Trace soft by Salifert alternating days. Things seem to do fine and are growing, maybe they would grow faster by feeding more but scared of over feeding so until things show there not happy think I will just keep doing as is. As for lights I have 3-250W MH and 4-6W power compacts. Nothings melted yet so thats good but everything was set up this year so there is still time to expierence that but things are growing some faster than others.

 

[IPisces]

A lot of people are having the problem of a colony just melting away. Whether its 3 polyps or 30 polyps. What could be causing this when all other zoas and corals in the tank are doing great?

For instance. I had a large colony of these little red zoas. The colony was fragged and one of the frags is doing great. I had another frag that was in the same tank and a couple months later it closed up, got hard and then disintegrated. The other frag is still doing great.

Other zoas have grown, quickly. Then over night almost, they would close up. Not want to open and they too would disintegrate.

Is it malnutrition? Or could it be bacterial infection? I've had whole colonies of up to a hundred polyps just start disintegrating. I've tried dipping in Coral RX and Melafix with no success.

 

[NanaReefer]

Most frustrating coral I've ever kept-lol. I've got a colony of at least 500 of unknown zoas that I couldn't kill if I tried. While others just melt if I sneeze

 

[IPisces]

Furan 2 has been suggested for treating zoapox. Could it be used as a preventative treatement for other diseases or bacterial infection?

 

[telefonica007]

i dont really feed anything and they are growing... maybe if i did they would grow faster. water changes every 5 weeks or so. Do any of you guys feed a frag tank with no fish??

 

[IPisces]

Well, I'm sorry, but how can you have a tank with no fish! I dont know...I cant! LOL!

But, yes I would. Usually its left over food and detritus that feed the corals, so I would think that feeding things like mysis and other meaty foods, like shrimp and scallops puréed or chopped very fine or even larger for lps. There are other products like coral frenzy, sps grow, oyster feast. But yes I would feed a tank with coral and no fish.

 

[ZoanthidKing]

hi i feed Reef roids, PhytoChrome,PhytoGreen-M,Zooplanktos-S,also Coral smoothie. Just dont use all of them at once i add Reef Roids and a few drops of any of the list i gave i do this 3 to 4 times a week Zoas like dirty water and they do better in dirty water i hope this helps you

 

[vlangel]

I gave up on zoas because of them just melting away mysteriously. I have not found that to be the case with palys. I have a colony that I've had since I got into corals. I feed frozen rotifer,phytofeast, baby brine and cyclopese. The fish get misc frozen food which I'm sure feeds the corals too. I do a 10% WC weekly and only dose as necessary with two part, magnesium, and infrequently with iodine, iron and coral vite. I've had really good luck with everything except zoas!

 

[merritt33]

Zooplex works good

 

[N1Husker]

I use Rods Original, Mysis, baby brine shrimp, thawed and rinsed with tank water, then mixed in tank water with marine snow, phytofeast, oyster feast, Brightwells Amino Omega, zooplex and marine vitamin C.

 

[Eileen60]

Hey Lorrie, I feed my tank as a whole twice a week with Phyto feast and oyster feast. I am now running LED's (3 weeks now) but before that I was running a 4 bulb T5 Tek 5 unit. I am waiting to see what effect the new lighting has on growth but my Watermelons and Red UFO's are taking off. My Gobstoppers are not the fastest growers the rest of them are growing at a nice rate. I do a 15/20 % water change every two weeks and I do not dose anything.

I feed the same.

 

[k_v1107]

Oyster feast