What's the deal with purple Zoa's?

[nvrEnuf]

So, a year in I am still a noob, but not a complete one.

I have learned a ton since I inherited a stocked FOWLR and brought it home. Two moves and a new tank later and I feel like I am well on my way in the hobby.

I've learned to quarintine, do pre-imptive treatments, and how to ID most marine pests as well as how to react to them.

I feel confident in nitrate, phosphate, and general biomass accumulation, transport, and export in various methods as well as how choices in set-up and specifically substrate can affect them.

I have a mixed reef with everything from shrooms to stags and very rarely have loss without knowing why and coming up with a future preventative plan.

SOOOOOO, why the hell does every purple Zoa I buy die???

Experience one: The first two corals I bought were zoanthids, a maroon on green and a green on purple. The maroon on green is in my current tank and has gone from 4 polyps to more than I can count. The 5 purple polyps died within 2 weeks. slowly melted away as if they had ZEN's is more like it, despite searching for them, finding no egg cases, and dips for good measure. I chalked it up to lack of experience and knowledge. (no macro in tank)

Experiece two: original 29BC now 5 months into my possesion, multiple corals now in tank having never lost a single one other than the purple zoa. Torch and hammer growing, multiple zoa colonies doing great. I got another small colony of purple zoa's. This time red on purple. This time the exact smae thing; except it took 39 days for the colony to wither away. I tried multiple lighting and flow placement, dips, leaving it alone, examined for spiders, nud's, stars, snails, etc. (no macro in tank, now dipping when aquired)

Third and current experience: Total of 14 months in the hobby, new 46 BF up and running for 6 months, softies to SPS (1 staghorn) all growing, gorg under the return to block from light even shows signs of growth (wife bought it for a present not knowing it wasn't something I would have put in the tank). I found 4 polyps of the same green on purple (PPE's?) in the $4.99 tank at the dome....what the hell, right? Wrong! 3 weeks in and closed for 5 days. The other (including a chaos paly) 4 'anthids I got that day? All growing! WTF??? What is it with purples? I've done a little (2 hours) research on the big forums and can't find a satisfactory answer. (Macro in tank)

Carrie at the Dome tells me she never could keep purple zoa's in her old softie tank, so I know it isn't JUST me, but I don't find a lot of info of others either.

Basics that may be pertenant:

Drilled 46 Gal BF w/ center overflow

12 gal sump w/ fuge¯o counter lit w/ 24 watt dual band screw in FL

skimmer, GFO reactor, 12X flow, single hydor 1600 in DT

(2) 12' reef spec BMLed at 8 HPD and (2) 24" actinic T5 at 10 HPD

77F, 1.025, PH8.1, C~440, MG~1200, ALK9, N=0, P=very little if any algea, weelly 5% with heavy sand sift.

Generally feed frozen mysis, but mix it up with cyclo, flake, etc...no pellets.

Thanks in advance!

[nvrEnuf]

Oh jeez, and yes ofcourse RO/DI

[+o0zarkawater]

Zoas die. Its what they do. Anyone who tells you they have never killed a zoa is either a liar or a wizard, either way I wouldn't trust them.

For about a year..... every zoa I bought and put in the tank would die off within a month. Free zoas? Always growing new polyps.

[Timfish]

Sounds like the basis for an expereiment of the effects different spectra have on the expression of the various fluorescing and chromo proteins in zoanthids and the long term maintenance of said zoanthids. Like o0zarkawater pointed out sometimes they just don't like you but I would try finding out if there's a big difference in the lighting as your overall success seems to pretty much rule out any kind of water quality issue.

[mFrame]

The blues and the purples have a reputation for being harder to keep. I've been told that they're often "deep water" zoas, not sure what difference that makes. Logically it could be temperature or spectrum...