kinda confused by this

[footballdude2k3]

hey guys, i am kinda thrown off by this, over the last week or so, i lengethened my daylights by about 30-45 mins and my zoas have spent a lot of the time closed, but there are a lot of new heads popping up. so i do not think that they are dying since there are new heads popping up, just wondering if this is standard for zoas or if they do not like the extra time.

 

[footballdude2k3]

a few new heads on this one

2 new heads on the goochsters

a couple new heads on this one

this only had 6 heads a couple weeks ago, has at least doubled in size

 

[footballdude2k3]

anybody?

 

[650-IS350]

parameters ?

 

[footballdude2k3]

alk 8.5
ca 400-450
nitrate 0-5
nitrite 0
ammonia 0
ph 7.6
salinity 1.025

 

[Flowbot]

Your PH seems too low at 7.6.

 

[jgonz_1979]

it looks like they need more light.

 

[650-IS350]

pH is pretty low, I run mines around 8.0-8.2, slowly get it up to that level.

since you have a 20 long, what type of lights are you using, height of light off the tank, level of placement of the polyps in the tank compared to the lighting and waters surface?

 

[footballdude2k3]

i have 2 30" t5hos, I am upgrading to a 40b next month and getting that and the lighting this weekend, it is a nova extreme pro 36" 6 bulb set. currently, the lights are prolly 5 inchese from the top of the water, and the zoas are in the top 1/2 of the tank. they were doing fine and open all the time prior to part way through last week, but i have also like i said experienced large amounts of new polyps since then. also i did go through a big pod explosion since they started being closed more, is it possible that they are closed to eat more often than they were?

 

[KafudaFish]

The change in your light cycle may have caused the zoas to start producing more polyps.

Many times nature looks at light cycles and temperature to indicate when is the proper time to reproduce. Because our tanks usually get the same amount of light each day there are not any enviromental cues to trigger certain responses.

It would be interesting to see if others have experienced this as well. Bulb replacement and/or change in photo period.

 

[footballdude2k3]

that is a very interesting thought and i like where you are going with it, i hadnt at all thought about it, now looking at it, there is some solid logic there.

 

[KafudaFish]

Thanks. I was sort of thinking to myself a bit and wondered how it looked on the screen.

While I eat my lunch now ......

Another thing to consider is energy and how an organism uses it.

It is used in several ways: maintance and repair, growth, and reproduction.

Someone can have a zoa colony with 10 - 20 polyps on it for months to years. They stay the same size and sadly don't produce any more polyps.
Something changes such as additional light or longer periods of it and then the polyps are bigger and/or the colony is now 22 polyps in size.

Food is along the same lines if you think about it.

On some of the "rare" color morphs I wonder if they are rare because we are missing something they require and don't grow much or fail to survive in our tanks or if there are very few in the collection sites. I am sure it is some of both and I am sure someone else with more knowledge could better address those points.

 

[Flowbot]

A lot of these "rare" color morphs actually do good and survive long term. They just grow slower than most other zoas/palys.

 

[650-IS350]

Zoanthids require light for photosynthesis which there zoanxthellea need. To produce the internal food that the polyp consumes.

 

[KafudaFish]

Zoanthids require light for photosynthesis which there zoanxthellea need. To produce the internal food that the polyp consumes.

So if we think that it was the lights then this makes sense. The light levels allowed for maintance in the tank and when the light was increased additional energy became available and the polyps reproduced.

I know you have been doing this a long time. Have you ever seen anything like this?

One other example I can think of is with Aquabucket's 3 days light out experiment for algae control. He always stated that he had better polyp extension on the first few days after he did this.