Zooanthids

[down&dirty]

I am trying to get a zooanthid prop tank up and running, and I am curious if there is something special that I can do to encourge their weed like growth. Is there something I can dose, current settings, or even lighting that will increase their rapid growth?

 

[liquid]

Good lighting, good water conditions, and feed them small particulate food occasionally. That's all it should take.

Shane

 

[Anonymous]

What kind of food, liquid?
~wings~

 

[liquid]

Eh, I typically feed my tank a mush blend that I make at home. Essentially its like 20 tails of fresh, peeled shrimp, maybe 4 oz of fresh squid, a couple squirts of Selcon, Dulse or Nori seaweed, and anything else that I have on hand like Golden Pearls. I blender them up with RO/DI water and freeze in ziploc bags. I then thaw a small section and feed it to the tank.

Another option I've also used is to peel the shrimp (remove tail), and throw the whole thing into a mixing bowl along with the squid, Nori / Dulse, Selcon, Golden Pearls, etc. I then mix it up real well with a spoon and pour the whole glop onto a piece of waxed paper. I then roll it into a log and freeze solid. When I'm ready to feed the tank, I peel off a section of the waxed paper and use a cheese grater to grate an amount into the tank. It saves having to blenderize everything (I'm lazy). That seemed to work really well until I forgot to put the log back in the freezer for 2 days. The stench was NASTY. heh

Shane

BTW, Wade's got a pretty good food recipe in our library: http://www.reefs.org/library/

Shane

 

[down&dirty]

But what is considered good water quality for zoanthids? Do they prefer a dirty water, or are they a coral that does best in sparkling clean water? Clearly by dirty I don't mean nasty, but some corals do like water that is full of floating stuff.

 

[ChrisV]

You admins think of some innovative ways of food preparation.

 

[ricky1414]

My zoos seemed to take off after the addition of MH.

 

[Anonymous]

I noticed my yellow Parazoanthids really took off when I moved them to a lower lit refugium (from MH to PC) with lower water movement. I don't think the "dirtiness" of the water is all that important. I'd skim, but not overskim, and feed them regularly. I think the more abundant food they got in the fuge was the biggest factor.

 

[down&dirty]

I just last month added the metal halides to my tank, and unfortunatly ended up with 75 gallons of reef tank gumbo shortly after, but now it is well on its way to recovery. My pink zoo's are exploding, they have more than doubled in size since the boiling. The rest seem to just be hanging out and thinking about growing. Hey its almost as good as growing. There is one set that I got from Garf that I got 3 polyps on and that was probably about 4-6 months ago, I picked them up in the middle of a snow storm. They just finally put out a 4th polyp.