My First Zoo...

D

Drix

Premium Member
I just got my first Zoo this weekend and wanted to make sure I'm doing things right. I acclimated it for about 5 hours before it took the plunge into my tank.

I'm on day 2 now and it looks healthy, almost all the polyps are open every day, I guess some of them are newer and aren't quite ready to be open yet, but not many.

Anyhow, I've placed them on one of the higher points in the tank (about 8" under water) and a bit off to the side of my metal halide light.

How do I know if it's happy there? It could be placed more directly underneath if if it needs it. I know I've read about Zoo's "stretching" toward light, how do I recognize this?
 
you don't have to acclimate zoos for 5 hrs. the recommended is 1 hr- 1.5 hrs. and you should start the zoas at the bottom of the tank and slowly place them higher in the tank especially with MH lighting so they don't get "burnt" good luck.
 
All I do is temp. acclimate my zoos... take them out of the bag and let them sit around a little. Put them in the tank on the sand bed and thats it!

I figured if zoos are sometimes exposed to the air, why should it be an exception here? After all, some people ship out zoos in a moisten paper towel or even newspaper.
 
Well how do I know if they're post toasties or whotnot? I'm assuming they're not getting burnt because they're at an angle from the lights and what I would think would be fairly deep for a zoo, but heck I don't know.

Whats the diff between a zoo and a pally anyway? I can't seem to find any information on the search engine. Pallys are short for what? I've heard they've got longer tentacles or whichever, is there a mouth shape difference? My Zoo's got dots for mouths, how come alot of the pics in the id forums have slits?

Need IMMMPUT!
 
Dont forget to dip them before placeing them in your display tank.Theres nothing like getting zoa eating nudis.
 
Prolly a little late for a dip now but I'll know for the future. I did give my zoo's a really good inspection before I put them in. I found a small white serpent star hanging about underneath the frag, but found no other forms of fungus or anything that looked out of place.

If I do end up with a zoo eating nudi he won't last long as this is the first piece of coral ever in my tank. So I'm ok with that if worse comes to worse.

Things are still looking good, but no-ones answered about stretching.

Anything else you guys can fill me in on would be great! Thanks a bunch!
 
If they are reaching for light they will get longer then what they are now. Palys will have a rough stalk(like sand feeling) and zoas a smooth one.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10294682#post10294682 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Drix
Prolly a little late for a dip now but I'll know for the future.
Click to expand...

Nah, it's never too late. You can always dip them after they've been added to a tank if they're having problems later. For instance if you end up having zoa eating nudis you can fw (freshwater) dip just your zoa rocks and have a pretty good chance killing all of the nudibranches since that's where they'll likely hang out. Don't forget to look for egg sacs. And if they're ever not looking happy for a few days an iodine dip certainly won't hurt them.
 
You guys are a fountain of useful information \o/

I'm still not quite clear on how to frag a zoo once I have a bunch. Can I just physically cut between the different zoo's on the mat and remove some and transplant or is there some special way to do it?

I dunno, it just seems to simple to me, I've gotta be missing something.

Next up, I've been looking at lots of zoo's to see what I have. Haven't found any match. My zoo isn't particularly anything bright and jumpy I'd say that they're copper around the outside with pink mouths and iradescant light green flecks going around the mouth like spokes on a wheel.

Anyhow, thats not as important as the next question: Are frags really worth like 10 bucks a polyp? I would assume RC has a frag trade forum someplace, right? Like, whats up?

I edit this post: 300 bucks a polyp?:eek2:
 
Last edited:
Ok More questions :)

My Frag (which is on a standard I guess quarter sized stone plug) has roughly 45 polyps. It seems to me from observation that theres a bit of overcrowding possibly leading to "stretching" Well, either that or my light isn't strong enough.

Whats the usual polyp density per quarter sized area? Should I consider splitting this into 2 sections?
 
They will stretch if you don't have enough light put them up on a rock up high. They will start moveing when they start overcrowding on to a rock that the plug is on
 
thumb_thisthreadisworthlesswithoutp.gif
 
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