Zoo's everywhere

[ShilohPSU]

I bought a cluster of sun polyps about the size of a baseball. They have always been fine under my 560w of outer orbit lighting and multiplied rapidly. The original baseball sized colony eventually spread to about twice the original size. When I woke up yesterday, I found little clusters of polyps just rolling/roaming all over the tank. Is this how polyps spread? They get big and then break off into new colonies? If that is not how polyps spread naturally, I'm guessing that my koran angel had some fun even though I never saw it nip at them. These are my first zoo's that i've had for over a year and half now, so I don't really know much about their life cycle.

 

[italia]

if it's not caused from your angel then yes it is how zoas can spread. If u search up the term Polyp bail you will find a huge article about this method of reproducing. Gonis, zoas, alot of stuff do it.

 

[capture]

how many would you say split off? monitor them if possible and let us know how many make it? or you planning on attaching them to rock yourself?
just wondering, wish mine would grow that outrageously.
thanks for sharing.

 

[ShilohPSU]

I would say that there are about 10 different clusters floating around of various sizes. One cluster is about 10-15 polyps while another may only be 5 polyps. There are about 15 left on the original colony. It would be great to frag them and start new colonies, but these are just some cheap brown/orange polyps that I threw onto an order for like 10$. I recently bought a frag of 5 polyps that are really colorful and I'm hoping that they will do as well as the not so colorful ones.

 

[capture]

good luck with the colorful ones doing the same.

 

[ShilohPSU]

Thanks for all of the info and advice. I'll be sure to make a post with a pic a few months from now when the colorful ones start growing.

 

[airinhere]

I would have to disagree about the polyp bailout concept put forth here. Polyp bail out usually refers to the releaase of fleshy material from skeletal material on LPS. It is a sign of stress and is not a means of reproduction.

I have many, many zoas in my tanks and have never experienced them coming free from the main colonies and rolling around the tank without something tearing them apart first. (usually me while fragging them).

Zoas should spread like a mat and new polyps appear from the edges.

Koran Angels are well known to snack on soft corals, and zoanthids are at particular risk.

What you are describing sounds like a classic case of an angel tearing up a coral and you are finding the damaged remnants drifting aimlessly around your tank.

To fix this problem you need to do two things.

First, you should look for another place to keep your angel. I know they are amazingly beautiful, but they are just not reef-safe types of fish. Of course you could just make the tank a fish only tank (FOWLR) and remove the zoas.

Second, (and assuming you are going to keep your tank a reef) you need to gather up all the loose frags of zoanthid floating around your tank and eiither tie them to rock rubble or try gluing them to your rockwork.

Fail to remove the angel and expect it to continue feeding on your polyps. Fail to take control of the loose polyps and expect to lose most of the free floating pieces.

 

[ficklefins]

Re: Zoo's everywhere

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11904357#post11904357 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ShilohPSU
I bought a cluster of sun polyps about the size of a baseball.

I have question about your first line. Did you buy sun polyps or did you buy a zoanthid that look similar to sun polyps? The link below are sun polyps, which are totally different than zoas.

 

[MUCHO REEF]

" If u search up the term Polyp bail you will find a huge article about this method of reproducing. Gonis, zoas, alot of stuff do it."

In 17 years I have never heard, read, seen this to be true or even close to being true. If you have polyps or clusters floating about your tank, there's a fish nipping on your polyps and also tearing them away from the base of the rock. This could also be true of a large invert.

I'm not dumping on you ShilohPSU, so please don't take it that way, but this is why I try my best to advocate education more so than pictures, naming, values, pricing, lineage etc. First and foremost should be education and knowledge of what you have and how to care for it. A reaction or treatment can mean life or death, based solely upon the wrong coral identification.

Ficklefins makes a great point and there is a difference.

I would listen to ever single word posted by airinhere. He has given an excellent reply and hits the nail square on the head.


Mucho

 

[capture]

mooch, not to hijack this thread but im with you on the education thing. i have found a major lack of interesting things to read around here. i like pictures as much as the next guy but i dont gain a whole ton of knowledge from them. reason why id like for the topic of the week back.

 

[ShilohPSU]

Thanks again for all of the replies, but I think this post should satisfy everyone's questions. And trust me, I took no offense to anyones comments.

The Koran angel is causing the problem. I have had this fish for a little over a month and it waited until a few days ago to start nipping at everything. The polyps, crocea clam, horn coral, and snails (astrea and mexican turbos). I bought this fish knowing that I may have to get rid of it, and have already made arrangements with the owner of my local fish store. It is just a matter of me letting it go, as it is my favorite and everyone elses favorite fish in there. I do have other corals (horn, mushrooms, fingerleather) and do not plan on going FOWLR. Score one for airinhere.

Now for the polyp identification. I did some research and they are not sun polyps. I found the invoice from 9/5/06 and they were listed as orange colony polyps. This was just a combination of me not remebering what I ordered and confusing orange with sun. My polyps are nowhere near as beautiful as the sun polyps. Score one for fickelfins.

Now for education and Mucho Reef. I was not really worried about the proper identification of the polyps. I just really wanted to know if polyps grow into large clusters and split off naturally, or if my koran angel developed a taste even though I had not yet seen it. This is why I added that these are my first polyps and I didn't know about their life cycle in the original post. I do understand the importance of proper identification and this one is a big "my bad"... But like I said, I just wanted an answer to the problem, and in this case, I didn't think that sun polyp, zoa, orange colony, ect made a difference. All I knew was that they went from a large colony to a bunch of small ones. I'll be more specific in the future. I do appreciate all of the advice.

I started out with a FOWLR over 8 years ago and have been getting into reefs over the past 3 years. I still learn new info all of the time, and it normally happens when something goes wrong like my colony polyps. Now I know some new info on polyps and Koran angels. First hand experience with some second hand knowledge from you guys. Thanks. Knowledge is also the reason why I've been volunteer at the 500g Penn State Aqurium for the past year. So I know how to run the big boys if I ever build a house and upgrade tanks.

Here is a pic of my 72g with most of the critters in it. You can see the thriving colony polyps on the bottom right. That whole cluster is completely gone now.

https://cms.psu.edu/AngelUploads/Files/cks136/DSCN0001.JPG

Shilohpsu

 

[MUCHO REEF]

Glad it all worked out for you Shilohpsu.

Love that centerpiece rock you have in your tank.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Aha! I had a Lawnmower blenny I caught eating my zoas. I refused to believe it could happen until a friend was here & pointed it out to me. Hard fish to catch in a tank FULL of rock too!

 

[slysock]

im not sure that your lawnmower blenny was eating them. they are herbivores. it doesnt sound like a blenny, ive seen them nibble at zoas and polyps, ony because they were getting algae off near them

 

[MUCHO REEF]

I agree with slysocks, they are grazzers and might have snipped near a polyp and it appeared they munched on a polyp.

Welcome to the forum Slysock.

 

[Questin]

I have been keeping Zoanthids for years and in that time they have filled up the rocks they are on to the point they have no place to go. What I have noticed happening since this situation has come up is that individual polyps have popped off from the mother colony and floating around until they found a new place to grow. This was not an overnight deal, more of a week or two where that single polyp slowly let go of its place next to all its brothers. In most of these cases this single polyp was in the middle of the colony and was almost pushed out by all the adjacent polyps.

Another case of “floating” also had to do with no room to grow, but was happening around the edges of a colony. This time the polyps were not letting go, but growing into a clump of polyps that were not attached to anything but themselves. The flow in the tank would do the rest and over the course of a few weeks or more that clump would be ripped from the mother colony because if was not attached to a solid structure. I only say this happening with Zoanthids that were clumping up on the substrate as they tried to expand across it.

Again, both these accounts took weeks to happen once I started to see them loose, the clumping took much longer.

 

[Pufferpunk]

I wouldn't have believed it myself, if someone else didn't see it too. He picked the zoa off the colony & swam away with it. Enough for me to spend hours catching the offender.