I have four different colors/types of Zoanthid colonies. A green and orange, pink and white, blue and green, and green and brown. All of them seem to be doing well except the pink and white ones which seem to me to be shrinking.
Not dissolving, no slimy stuff on them. Just shrinking like they are starving. I'm using PC lighting. The Current Orbit 65 Watt X4 fixture and they are in a corner of the tank that gets direct sunlight through a window for about an hour a day. I feed them a squirt of either frozen fish food or cyclop-eze about once a week. But they still seem to be getting smaller.
I don't know. Maybe I'm imagining things. It's hard to see in the photo. To me it looks like the stolons are smaller and the "faces" of the zoas are smaller. Maybe I have some chemical warefare going on between them and the other zoanthids? They are fairly close together in the tank. A few of them are closed because I spot fed them with cyclop-eze a little earlier. This picture is a little green because I didn't do any color correction on it yet.
I'm curious if the lighter colors of zoanthids like these have lesser amounts of xoozanthellae and perhaps need more solid foods?
Here's the full tank. Just because I haven't posted a picture of it here yet.
Nothing strange there. And like I said, eveything else in the tank is doing well. Maybe they're just adjusting to the new light levels. The guy I got them from had them under halides. I have PC's.
just brainstorming, what type of media are you running? Anything with aluminum ( ie..phos ban). This sometimes does this, though it can be easily skimmed. just a thought.. hmmm.
well for starters, it sounds like they were not all that healthy to begin with. there are not any photosynthetic corals that i know of that are white. (same with anenomes) when they are healthy.
the lack of color is usually a sign that they had expelled there zooxanthellae (the whiter, the more they have expelled)
generally speaking if you keep them well lit, and fed, they will usually recover.
as noted in some other psots, Zoathids are hardy little buggers. just keep them fed, and keep an eye on them...
you might also want to look at lowerign the SG a bit...
1.027 is not that high (i maintain 1.026) in my SPS tank, but you might want to lower it to help the healing proccess. i know this is helpfull with fish, but dont have facts on this for coral... so take it as that.
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They aren't really white. They are a light pink (Exactly the same color as my pulsing Xenias) with mint green centers. It's difficult to see in the photos though. But your statement reinforces what I was thinking, that they don't have as much zooxanthellae as the darker colored ones. So I guess I'll try spot feeding them more often and see what happens.
What do you feed your Zoanthids? So far I have tried Cyclop-eeze and a mixture of frozen fish food (A mixture of bloodworms, mysid shrimp, etc). But I haven't had much luck getting the pink ones to eat it. They have much smaller mouths and they close up without taking anything in usually. And then my Peppermint shrimps come in and steal the food. Maybe my technique is lacking. I don't have any problems with my Green or Blue Zoas though.
They are really hardy. I almost killed the greens in my avatar when I first started, but they bounced back nicely.
Gravity was a little high. I hadn't added any top off water yet when I posted that. I usually try for 1.026 also.
I have seen those pink poisies before. I think platinum reefs had some like that. I cant really remember. Anyway, they will usually shy away for awhile when light has brightened up or if you changed the water flow. Ie....front to back or left to right.... yada yada. anyhow, I have completely demolished a cool colony of dragon eyes just to find new colonies growing on other rocks. they move around and spread like weeds. Yours should be fine. I would only seriously wonder if they close up for periods of time, not normally done.
here are some cool coppery colored ones I have also... Again, these were the first frag I had ever got and completely left them out once. dropped LR on them and burned them with a hydnophora. They still took over and covered a large portion of the rock they are on.
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I have seen those pink poisies before. I think platinum reefs had some like that. I cant really remember. Anyway, they will usually shy away for awhile when light has brightened up or if you changed the water flow. Ie....front to back or left to right.... yada yada. anyhow, I have completely demolished a cool colony of dragon eyes just to find new colonies growing on other rocks. they move around and spread like weeds. Yours should be fine. I would only seriously wonder if they close up for periods of time, not normally done.
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