My new Blue Zoo/Paly colony

[Scottkelly911]

I went into a local store that I rarely go into last week. They don't usually have anything good and have a pretty bad reputation in the local reefing community, but occassionally I go into this shop hoping to come accross a diamond in the rough. Well, I think my persistence paid off. I'm not sure what they are, I do know I got a KILLER deal on this colony and I'll tell you guys how much I paid them for once I get some feedback to see how good of a deal I got. Most of them have long stalks and the polyps are larger than normal zoo's. Maybe you guys can help me ID them whether they're zoo's or Paly's and what they are. Also since my colony is so large, what would a per polyp frag be worth if I were to do say 5-10 polyp frags? What would this colony be worth if I sold it whole (I would not do that any circumstances, just curious how good of a deal I got). I currently only plan on trying to grow them out, but I've NEVER seen these before, so may be willing to frag them once I get them growing and see that it's starting to show new polyps. You guys are a great wealth of knowlegde, sorry for the bad pix but hopefully they're good enough to get some info on them. BTW, I have not in ANY way altered the photos other than resizing, no photoshop, no color alteration or anything. Sorry for Rambling, but I'm excited about these, lol!

The entire colony, to reference size, on the top left is a small Conch and on the right middle is a Mexican Red Leg Hermit. I just set the rock on some Feather Caulerpa until I made room for them. Now it's sitting pretty on the sand.

Here's a close up shot of them which hopefully will be good for Identification purposes

In this Pic you can see how tall they are

 

[dc_909]

Cool lookin blues. Hopefully you can keep them blue.

 

[Scottkelly911]

Thanks dc, I sure hope so. I know blues can be difficult to keep their color. Right now, I've got them on the sand in a stock JBJ Nanocube 12 DX with 2 24-watt 50/50 bulbs, so hopefully they should do ok. From the best of my knowledge blues do well in lighting that isn't too intense because they're usually found in deeper waters, is that correct? If I'm wrong on that, hopefully someone will let me know and I'll move them up. If they require more intenes lighting like metal halides, then I'll move them over to my 55 gallon.

 

[critmin]

There you are!! Haha I was looking for you but I couldn't remember the middle part of your handle. I thought it was fairy for fairy wrasse haha so I kept searching for scottfairy911. Anyway I don't think that it is necessarily true that all blues like lower lighting. For instance, I have heard that carribean blues like really high lighting. Also tub's blues do alright with high lighting. They get a lighter blue color and with mine the blue was much better under halides than pc's so anyway that's just my experience. Oh and I must say that the macro shot is of great help in the store when you showed me the pics I thought they looked quite different than that. They look like paly's to me because of the lines other than that I am not really sure what they are but I'll do a little digging to see if I can find out. Oh and that mysteri wrasse I got for the store is pretty sweet you should come check it out, haha.

 

[Scottkelly911]

Hey Richard, good to see you the other day. Yeah I've got two colonies of Fire and Ice zoo's, seem the ones doing better are higher up in my tank than the ones that are lower. I tend to agree with you that these might be Paly's, I've just never seen or heard of blue Paly's before, so if they are, I imagine they're quite rare. Anything you find out and can help that'd be awesome! About that Mystery wrasse, I do love them, they've got great personality. But I also hear they seem to have an appetite for shrimp (so do I especially coconut battered). Plus they can sometimes be bullies to some fairy and flasher wrasses, so I'm going to have to pass on it. Right now, I've got a pretty good group of fish in the 55, so I think I'm going to concentrate on corals for a while, maybe a small goby or two for my Nano/zoo tank. Right now, I've got a clown goby, a Yashia goby, a Hi-fin goby and a pistol shrimp that hangs out with both of them.

 

[critmin]

There are a few blue paly's. You can check Zoaid. As I said smurfs and also chromis paly's and some others, but I don't know if there are any that look like those. I think you should put them under halides and see if they color up even more. Oh we also have a flashing tile fish. They are really cool but pretty delicate. They change colors really fast hence flashing, I got two for myself haha. Probably not a good fish for your tank but you should check them out just because I don't see a lot of them and also not as healthy. If no one takes that guy I'll take him home. I got a really good deal on him.

 

[critmin]

Hmm, they a look a little like neon sky on zoaid. There a lot of blue zoas and palys there, I didn't even realize how many there were. I wonder why I haven't them in trades or prop sales.

 

[SugarFox03]

Those look a lot like the caribbean blues I've seen for sale around here. They aren't too expensive, but then again I'm in S. FL which is where they are found...but I know are found in a bit deeper water than other zoos.

 

[critmin]

I think a lot of people are saying different things about the carribbean zoas. I know there were a few threads on the care of caribbean zoas and people had really different experiences and also people would post picks of their zoas and say they were caribbean zoas but then their zoas didn't look all that similar so I don't know.