Signs of Zoa Stress and How to Fix It

[Sasquatch]

Signs of zoa stress and how to fix it..

 

1. Too much light or being trampled by hermits and snails they will close or look squished, maybe bruised. You want to move them to a darker lower spot or on a ledge that a shell cannot travel to easily

:The red Zoas were in to strong of light and just the centers are showing, the bottom ones are all shut on one side, if these happen rearrange them until they reopen again

:Either partial shade or lower down than before, sometimes if they reach to tall and look like trumpets it's to little of light. The far right is the same morph in proper lighting

 

2. Algae can be the death of Zoas

: you want to put it somewhere snails can graze, and get a clean up crew that eats the algae if you do not have hermits or a Seahare does great with green hair algae.

: if the CUC isn't touching it, pull the algae out with your fingers if it's long enough, or frag up the zoa and clip off the rock surrounding the polyps till you have separated the polyps from the rock and reglue to a new clean live/dry rock

 

3. Being stung by coral or worms, Sometimes you get spider webs inside the tank or so etching is eating your Zoas

:The God or wars (right) are bleached and closed up, maybe have brown or black spots on them from where the Vermitid worm's spider web is stinging them, or maybe it's a sweeper from a coral it will look like this

: super glue up the source of the spider webs, it should look like a feather duster hole with 2 antennae reaching out, or move the coral or zoa out of sweeping range.

 

:This photo ^ also shows how I arrange a clear path for hermits to crawl around my Zoas and not over them, steep walls and frags on a plateau will keep them from climbing, but they need an easy route to travel on. (You can see the red skirt Zoas on the left look closed and bruised from being trampled over when the route was clogged with a plug)

:Overhangs and channels need to be built in between your rockwork, and you can build in fences to make them go around the long way, see the rocks sticking up on the left used to be the climbing path.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Sasquatch

[TheClark]

Good stuff thanks for sharing.  It is such a mystery sometimes when they are closed for no apparent reason.

 

I echo another tip you shared with me a couple years ago.  When in doubt, dip em.  Sometimes there are predators you cannot detect, but dip anyways.  

[fishboys]

Thank you for the advice mr samsquanch. I love that red tipped anemone.

 

The Samsquanch reference is from a show that is one of my guilty pleasures.

[softy]

 

[badxgillen]

Well thanks for the info Squatch, like many corals zoas can have a sensitive side and usually it is simply a matter of finding out what it is that  is bothering them. 

 

You got the idea Softy, preventative maintenance at its finest, too funny.

[sroberts]

Thanks for the valuable pointers. There are so many things that can affect the growth

of our corals!