New Zoo Owner...Questions...

[plasma800]

I bought my first zoo rock a while back, maybe four weeks ago and they seem healthy, but always look like they do in the attached picture. Is it normal for only some of them to open and the rest to stay half shut? Are they under too much lighting maybe? I use a 4x96 pc combo over a 75g. Water params are good, cept i can never get my CA over about 370, but working on that.

My mushrooms in the background love their spot and are growing like mad. I would love for them to begin to grow on another rock.

Is it also possible for zoo's to move to a new rock?

[stereomandan]

Those are two different types of polyps I believe. It looks like button polyps(the large ones) and zooanthids. They both look normal.

Dan

[plasma800]

really? That's interesting...show how much I know huh?

Cool, thanks for the info!

[Nagel]

Button polyps is a common name that usually refers to zooanthids. So the larger ones I wouldn't call buttons. The larger ones look more like protopalythoa polyps. The smaller ones definately look like zoos. I would need a better picture though of the bases to be sure the smaller ones aren't palythoa. But they look like my orange zoos. I would make sure the protos don't overgrow the zoos, they can do it, I've seen it happen. If they encroach much, just cut out the offending protos and mount them on a new rock with some superglue.

HTH

[plasma800]

pictures are served

http://www.2k911.com/jharper/aqua/zoos.htm

some are blurry..but they arent bad. Hope you ahve broadband :)

Actually they're not that big.

Thanks,
JH

[plasma800]

Some of these pictures were taken after I kinda stoked em a bit and they closed up so you could see the base.

[Nagel]

Pictures totally clarified it, they look like true palythoa polyps (the small ones) and the larger ones are protopalythoa. Zoos are connected at the base as well, but yours seem to have a somewhat thicker base, representative of palythoas..

[plasma800]

Ok well that clarifies that huh!

I do notice that there are more of the large polyps than there were. If you look again at the first photo, the big polyp right on top used to not be there, there were smaller polyps there.

I would love to get into the whole fraggin thing, but I'm wwwaaayyy unsure about how to do that.

Can I literally just snip it off one of those larger polyps at the base and attach it to another rock? Will it grow more of those there?

[plasma800]

also, does that mean that these are not true zoanthids? sorry for the dumb question...just tryin to learn.

[plasma800]

I just looked through the whole zoo pic post, and didn't find nuttin that looked like what I have...what the heck have I really got here...

also read in another post that these things are dangerous? Is that true...

[Nagel]

do a search for palythoa polyp pictures, you're bound to find it...
Use the search (http://reefcentral.com/forums/search.php?s=) feature here.