Care of African blue zoanthids...

Hey Eric,

A big THANKS for sending these out. The delivery setup and communication were just top notch. Thank Von for me!

I blew them off in front of a Tunze stream 6000. The rock was pretty clean and the polyps were in good shape, nothing squashed or dying looking.

Here's a couple pics after being in the tank about 10 minutes.


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I've moved my 2 frags to high flow and high light in my display. In the week that followed i lost about 6 polyps on one and 3 on the other. Over the weekend i was inspecting them and notice 2 new polyps on the larger frag. Lose 6 gain 2 isn't going to keep it alive long but its promising for me anyway. I'm hoping the remaining polyps stay healthy from here out.
 
I'm going to check when my LFS is ordering from SDC next... I'll make sure they set me aside a colony of these... Time to quit watching and jump in head first... ;)
 
I have had no problems with these (one xL rock and one medium one)... but they are in my sps sales tank with lots of flow, and more of a 12k t5 lighting scheme... they are doing really well.
 
If these are from area's that's impossible to replicate than why even bother getting them in? Is there really that much money in collecting corals that have a very low survival rate?
 
Stripe01

None of our living corals environment can be exactly replicate....but trust in the coral that it is smart, and can adapt to the environment we can provide. We have seen much success with these African polyps....just need the ones that have not been successful to handle them differently, and know how to properly treat them in cases of "challenging" moments :)

It's not only about the money.....yes I would be lying if I said there was no money...haha...that would be funny. I believe we are seeing a high survival rate overall, just more problems than common corals due to the new area and type of this coral, it's new and needs a different handling than many of us thought. It's part of the learning beauty of this hobby/business don't you think?

Just my thoughts anyway.

E
 
Eric,

The colony came in. Nice size btw. roughly 60-70 polyps on this badboy. I dipped in revive for a while. 90% opened up within 2 hours. only a couple polyps either squished or detriorated, I'll scrape that off today. I put it 3/4 high on the tank under 250MH's and right where the flow of 3 power heads meet.

Thanks.
Charles-
 
Cool...good to hear. Sorry I was not able to pick the coral out myself as I got tied up in a meeting while that order was being packed....but sounds like my staff handled it well as usual.

Keep us posted to your success on this colony. Let's see how it goes. By the way...we received that colony from Ghana about two weeks ago.

Best regards,

Eric
 
I have been following this thread for a while simply because I have one of them (see my post here on 5/4/09). 2 months later - the colony looks as good as the first day in my tank and I am starting to see new babies on the edges. the colony is located on the bottom of my tank (T5 lighting) in medium flow area. a second colony bought from the same LFS from the same shipment by my friend is gone by now. he tried bottom, top, middle etc - nothing was helping.
in the first week or so, I have notice zoa pox and have preformed 4-5 furan 2 dips. it went away and no problems since than. I dose vitamin C twice a day from Iherb.

since I am relatively new to this hobby, I was wondering what is the time table on such a new zoa till it aclimates and survives in tank enoviroment? 2-3 months? maybe 4?
 
My colony is still doing great as well. Been about a month now. Lost about 1/3 of the frags I made but the remaining are all doing well and some have begun to grow new polyps.

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It's been about a month now since I posted my pic. I lost about 2/3 of the colony. I also lost all of the 3 frags I tried making. One of them being fairly large I was planning on trading.

Thanks Eric for your insight and research on these moody but beautiful zoas. Now that we know about the protozoan, hopefully I can salvage what is left of the colony and get them to grow back out.
 
Kaylo....

Thanks for the nice post.....

Why do you think you lost your polyps? It would be cool to hear your experience.

Eric
 
To start with, my summer work schedule leaves me little time to do as much maintanance on my tank as I would like to.

I notice that a few polyps at a time close up and shrivle and it spreads into a small patch of about 5-10 closed and dying off. I am guessing it is the protozoa at work.
I haven't had time to dip the colony, so this is why they have died off in the numbers that they did. I also ran out of my dip solution and haven't had time to get more. The frags I made (outside the larger one for trade) were just stray polyps that floated off and I glued to a plug. All of the frags died though as I said in my last post.

I did remove all the dying polyps the other day before work, so i'm hoping this buys me a little more time before the dying process starts again. I finally have a break next week from work, so i'm keeping my fingers crossed till then.

Also I was wondering. Does this protozoan attack other surrounding colonies? I had a fairly large colony of whammin' watermelons that just seems to have disappeared. I had this colony from about 20 polyps a year+ ago and they seemed fine before. Within the last month, they polyps shrunk in size. Now theres only a few polyps left. I moved the colony to see if they bounce back.
 
Kaylo,

Let me know if you think the protozoan is contagious.

Can you mention the flow in your aquarium, or how the blue steel colony was affected by either soft or strong current? I am trying to put together whether or not flow is the main factor in their success.

Thanks!

Eric
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15189663#post15189663 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sdcfish
This coming week Timinator! Waaaaaz up with you this weekend?


Golf and cleaning the tank, in that order.

How about you guys?
 
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