What makes Zoanthids grow and grow FAST?

[Hugegoose]

If any one has good information on how to make Zoanthids gorw at a fast rate PLEASE share your knowledge!!

[JGoslee]

Good light, good flow, and stable parameters.

[Jon in SW Ohio]

Patience.

j/k In all honesty, no two morphs I have grow at the same rate. JGoslee's advice is the tried and true answer IMO.

[drummereef]

Originally posted by JGoslee
Good light, good flow, and stable parameters.

Simple but so true.

[distallassazn]

ive noticed my zoas do better in higher lighting with moderate to low flow. and of course my parameters have to be in check.

[tekknoschtev]

I don't think that there is any one factor, without the others, that will contribute to the accelerated growth of zoanthids. As mentioned above, appropriate lighting, flow and stable water parameters are all key points. I have noticed that on top of stable, you need proper water parameters. Our tank was running with a perpetually low calcium and alkalinity, but we didn't think anything of it because everything seemed to be doing ok; however once we began supplimenting for calcium and alkalinity, we began to see certain colonies that had been notoriously slow growers begin to pop off polyps like there was no tomorrow. I'm away at college, but drive home about every weekend it seems, and most of the colonies I can distinctly see new polyps coming in, and older new polyps becoming mature polyps.

That said, stable and appropriate water parameters alone won't do the trick. Our tank is lit with 400W XM 10K halides, and I'm a firm believer in having higher lighting for zoas, but its not an all inclusive statement. I definitely have some zoas that prefer to be in more shaded areas in the tank. You just have to experiment. Thts not to say you need 400W halides to grow zoa successfully - but rather, I've noted that they aren't the low-light-loving corals that we initally thought they were when we began this hobby. They can tollerate lower lighting, but more lighting seems to elicit faster growth.

And, just to further my point, even if you have stable water parameters, and excellent lighting, not much will happen if the flow isnt correct. Again, a falacy when we began this hobby was that zoanthids (and most softies) prefered slower moving waters. While in some instances this is true, I've found that most corals, not just zoanthids, do better when they are given the maximum amount of flow that they can handle without closing up - and to that end, random turbulant flow seems to do the trick better than strong laminar flow. Again, laminar flow will work, but to bring out the fastest growth, I've found that having random strong flow brings about much faster growth rates than laminar strong flow or any combination of lower flow. I try to get as much flow to my zoanthids as they can handle, without closing up or stressing them out.

And - on top of ALL of that, once your zoanthids have found a happy place in your tank that now has very stable water parameters, good lighting and some pretty amazing flow, LEAVE THEM ALONE. I've found that once they've found a happy spot, that they want to stay there. Moving them around seems to sort of "shock" them and they go into a state where they need to settle back in before they will grow the same again. Some of them settle in in a few hour, and some of them it can take weeks or months!

[nUgZ]

I agree with tekknoschtev. The less you mess with them the faster they will take off.

[trottman]

joe's juice does not help them.

[Giovanni]

I recently set up a shallow frag tank plumed into my main system aimed at sps. It has 3-4 inches of water and 225watts of light. 5-6 gallons of water with random flow provided by two of the new hydor prop pumps pushing 330gph each combined with the return flow of about 100gph. I put some Zoas that I had in the bottom of my tank in it at the edges where the flow and light are not so much. These polyps started to mature and grow within a week. I have had them for several month without noticing any improvement.


Here is a photo of the setup.

[timrandlerv10]

If you built that as a stand alone tank, would it need to be skimmed?

How would you run a 'zoo only' frag tank?

[Giovanni]

It is not a stand alone tank. Not sure why you would need to skim. Problem with a small tank like this stand alone is over heating and the like keeping parms stable.