zoanthids:Color and varieties?

[JLAudio]

I just finished looking at www.ultimatefrags.com and was wondering how do they come up with all these varieties of zoo's?

Do they see one zoo in their colony with an odd but attractive mutation in color and than they seperate it and let it reporduce. (i.e Darwin natural selection w/ human manipulation)

Anyone have any insight into how they go about getting all these artificial varieties?

 

[Deanos]

Anyone have any insight into how they go about getting all these artificial varieties?

Most zoanthids available to hobbyist are either wild or aquacultured from wild varieties. There aren't many reports of zoanthids spawning in the home aquarium. Zoanthids in reef aquariums typically reproduce via splitting off "babies" of themselves. IMO, the only ways a reefer can manipulate the colors of a zoanthid is through lighting and nutrient levels in the aquarium. Therefore, I believe all the differing varieties are "natural" and genetically encoded into each polyp.

 

[Wes]

i agree w/ deanos. They are not artificial people just come up w/ names for the extraordinary. I'll let u in on a little secret. Many of the fancy zoas only look amazing under actinics and macro lense.

You probably wouldn't look twice at many of them w/ a naked eye under 10k lighting.

 

[rookie07]

I agree with the above statements....not to mention the prices on that web site are...high, to be polite about it. I wouldnt pay that much!

 

[JLAudio]

Really? I thought it was conceptually similar to possibly dog breeding, where they are using an animal with a particular physical trait (big ears, small stature, coloration) and isolating these traits inorder to creat a whole different looking breed over time with selective breeding, but in an asexual manner.

For example if you have a full rock with polyps and remove one with a distinct color that seems different than the mother colony. This would split and possible reproduce more with that trait that was formally viewed as a mutation and so on.

 

[Deanos]

Dogs are bred using 2 sets of genes to produce unique offspring (sexual reproduction). For the most part, zoanthids reproduce asexually, meaning the offspring will be identical to the "mother" polyp. Mutations do occur and would produce a new "variety". Reefers haven't been able to purposely cause these mutations.

 

[tosiek]

The mutations do occur in tanks but its pretty rare. Ive only seen 2 posts about a unique zoa growing from a zoa colony. And its really slight mutations, not like WOAH ITS A NEW ZOA COMPLETELY DIFFERENT COLORS!

 

[budman0418]

zoo

I think i see what you getting at. Your saying that one zoo in a colony could look alittle different then the rest. now you frag out that one zoo and see if it will spawn into an exact copy then again and again till you have a colony of zoos the same, but looking different frim the oringinal colony you took it from. I think that could be possible RARE but possible.

 

[bigbris1]

I have a bam bam orange that's budding a Tubb's blue!!

 

[Deanos]

I have a bam bam orange that's budding a Tubb's blue!!

ics:

 

[bigbris1]

When I get home, I'll take pics.

 

[bigbris1]

ics:

Hard to tell with the crappy cameraphone pic but look to the left of the bab bam

 

[GreshamH]

Most zoanthids available to hobbyist are either wild or aquacultured from wild varieties. There aren't many reports of zoanthids spawning in the home aquarium. Zoanthids in reef aquariums typically reproduce via splitting off "babies" of themselves. IMO, the only ways a reefer can manipulate the colors of a zoanthid is through lighting and nutrient levels in the aquarium. Therefore, I believe all the differing varieties are "natural" and genetically encoded into each polyp.

+1 (I know Rommel, he's not breeding them )

 

[bigbris1]

I must say tho, the colors of the stuff I got from Rommel look like the pics from his site after I changed to T5 actinics Plus bulbs from a power compact fixture. It's all about the lighting.