New Zoas Not Opening

[Snowsrfr]

I got a frag pack from a seller on R2R last Saturday. I temp acclimated them, drip acclimated them, then added them to my Biocube with the 150W HQI MH. The high end ones either barely open are closed up tight. He added some freebies and of course they opened up fine.

He said he keeps the zoas under LED's but moves them to lower lighting after fragging. All the frags were placed at the most, 3 inches off the sand bed. This morning I moved them all under shaded areas to see if it's a lighting issue. I noticed one frag had some slimy coating that I brushed off. I have other polyps in the tank that open just fine, ie spidermans, magnas, mary janes, bam bams.....

Would trying a dip in CoralRX maybe help? Any other thoughts? Just give them more time and see what happens?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Pallobi]

are they properly healed yet? or i should say, were they healed upon purchase?

 

[Snowsrfr]

Well being new to buying zoa packs, he claimed they were cut for a couple weeks before shipped and I received WYSIWYG pics that show then supply open and looking great.

 

[howze01]

Did you dip them when you first got them? If you didn't I would dip them now. Sometimes it just takes a while for them to adjust. I had Tubbs Blues that it took more than 2 weeks for them to open. Put them in the shade and in a low flow area if you have a spot like that.

You should always dip new corals at the least. A coral QT tank isn't a bad idea either.

 

[Snowsrfr]

They are in shade and low flow. I normally dip, but got in a hurry. I know..no excuse.

 

[howze01]

We all do it eventually. The time I didn't dip I ended up with zoa eating nudis.

Don't give up on them till there's nothing left on the plug! Good luck

 

[Snowsrfr]

We all do it eventually. The time I didn't dip I ended up with zoa eating nudis.

Don't give up on them till there's nothing left on the plug! Good luck

That's my exact plan...not giving up until they melt away. The seller is great and really involved in trying to help me figure out what's up, anything else I can do, etc. So that's nice.

 

[408Reefer]

I had the same experience with a pack that I bought. The ones I bought did not open up and the two freebies opened up fine and looked great. In my case I assume that the vendor had the freebies laying around for days and were healthy and not recently fragged. The other zoas did not make it. I was pretty sure they were freshly fragged and shipped because they were supposed to be wysiwyg but how is it that the vendor was able to sell 4 frag packs to 4 different people. Obviously 3 people are not getting what they saw. My vendor was nice enough to replace them but this time I made sure it was at least 2 weeks of healing before he shipped and they turned out great. 100% survival the second time.

 

[organism]

It sounds like some snip and ship issues but it could be something else. Can you post the wysiwyg pics that the seller gave you? It'll be really easy to tell from those.

As far as the coating you brushed off of the one frag, that's an alarm bell that they're not getting enough flow and could melt, definitely make sure they're getting some water movement since that's really important for newly shipped zoanthids. Also for future reference never drip acclimate corals, they don't need it and it does more harm than good due to the ammonia mini-cycle caused during shipping.