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disintegrating zoas


Teresa

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Hi All,

I just moved from a 29 gal tank down to 12 gal nano. Some of my zoas are doing great - others are suffering horribly. Please look at the attached pictures. I've listed tank information below and would love some advice!

old tank: 29gal, w/t5 4x24w, hang on back carbon filtration, protein skimmer

new tank: 12 jbj nano, 70w MH, hang on back carbon filtration (until full cycle), same protein skimmer, same water, same sand, I had sold off most of my live rock - so 80% of the live rock is new (but from other tanks)

Problem: half of my zoas are doing fine - the others are not. In the pictures you can see the black cherry's are happy and open, whereas the AOG are literally disintegrating! Both of these are new frags. However, I also have frags of my atomic dragon eyes right next to it (from old tank) - one frag is doing well the other is disintegrating!

I thought there might be too much light and I tried moving the AOG frag to the bottom of the tank with no difference (plus the healthy and disintegrating frags are right next to each other in the photo (i.e. same lighting conditions) but different outcomes). I thought maybe the AOG were just not as hardy, but that doesn't explain the difference in the dragon eyes. I have carbon running - so I figure any "bad stuff" would be filtered out.

Any ideas?? I'm thinking it might be too late for these frags - but I want to get others and I don't want them to die!

post-1201-095323200 1279908055_thumb.jpg

post-1201-039279700 1279908092_thumb.jpg

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Still could be the lighting. Changing lighting is always going to upset some of the corals, as they had gotten used to a specific spectrum of light. Have you had the AOG zoas longer than the others?

I scorched half of my tank when adding new bulbs and not adjusting the light cycle down enough. The older the corals I had, the general worse they got punished. Some of the newer stuff I got at the frag swap went through unphased.

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I thought about that so I have reduced the light schedule. The AOG and black cherrys are from another member - both new and introduced to the nano only. The two frags of dragon eyes are from my own collection (also visible in photo) and all are doing well except for the frag closest to the aog. Should I move the AOG to the bottom of the tank as well?

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Probably wouldn't hurt. But as innate said, sometimes zoas just melt.

Most people think zoas to be one of the hardiest corals. But I have found it just depends on the colony/type. I have some that have been through heck and back, and are currently flourishing. Others melted shortly after being added to the tank.

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When did you move them over to the new tank? As stated above they may need to be acclimated to the lights and tank.

Water parameters are probably different between each tank. I had a whole colony of Green Bay Packers disappear, a couple of months later the reappeared with a vengeance. Zoas are weird like clown fish. . .

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I've had a few frags of zoas melt like that, left the plug in place, and found that three months later an apparently completely barren rock would show a new zoa growing. Just saying that if they do melt, leave the plug there and you might be suprised if it rregenerates.

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  • 1 month later...

Mikes got a good point, if you need more details on exactly how to do that let one of us know. If you will do a peroxide dip, turkey baster, and then a quick freshwater dip it will be the best that you can do as far as what I know. I have saved about 30% of my dying zoas doing this, it isn't a for sure fix but it helps.

The other thing that I have noticed is that you must cut away the rotting zoas from the good ones or it will spread....if there are any good ones left. I've been having the same problem lately, probably b/c of the light.

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