What should I do with this zoa?
 

Hey,
I bought it and it was beautiful. Fully opened and was growing over the frag. However, 3 days after it entered my tank, it closed up and never reopened. Any ideas why?
Ren

I had a drag of zoas close for 2 weeks before opening up. After that they grew like crazy. I'd probably give it a bit more time. As long as it's not melting

+1 on wait (if it's not melting)...

Possibly blast it with a little bit of mysis or cyclop-eeze to see if it will peek out (or at least change enough to be confident it's just ****ed off and not dieing)

Have you tried moving it to another location in the tank? I actually compare zoas more to SPS in behaviour than I do other soft corals. Yes, some zoos will grow damn near anywhere but others are super picky about lighting and flow. I have a some zoas that hate the high flow and light of my tank and had to move them accordingly. I have others than literally need to be next to my SPS to open up and be happy.

Some zoas really don't like being moved to another tank (another SPS quality). They'll close up for a few days to weeks until they feel safe again. Like mentioned before: if they're not melting away, just wait. But do consider where you have them placed. They might not be in an ideal location.

Scuba: I've moved them 3 times already in the past 6 weeks. No matter where I put them, they don't open and I wait at least a week to 10 days before moving.
Ren

Zoas are like that. I had one that didn't open up properly for like months and is now showing some faces. You might want to check for zoa eating nudibranch just in case. Zoas come from wide variety of places at wide variety of conditions so unless you are particularly sure about it, you will have to experiment with its position (but not too often; maybe once a week...not sure about the number).

I presume you got an aussie zoa over there? They are particularly very picky about acclimating to the tank and their location.

I agree with most of this post, if you would like to link your reference for Aussie zoas melting easier I would love to read it? I would also love to know which Zoa species are obligate Aussies?

How did you go about adding it to the tank and what are your parameters? Although zoas will stay closed for extended periods of time a swap from good water to good water won't cause it.





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I don't know about the melting issue or which particular ones are from aussie. But till now, I had two aussie zoas (the seller told me ofcourse :P), one rainbow and the other one dont know. The rainbow melted within few days and the other one actually took over a month of adjustment.

I guess the exotic and harder zoas are from aussie; not sure though :P

This is the dude I've been waiting to hear chime in:lol:

You listen to him. He knows his stuff good.

Although your logic is correct your sample size is far to small to eliminate bias. This is the internet and everyone's entitled to their opinion, let's just be diligent in our homework before posting information that might not be true.

Another thing you need to consider is that there is ONE ocean, "Aussie" drives the price up just as fast as "Japanese Deep water" does. Are these actually collected from Aussieland and NOWHERE else in the ocean? Are these even from Australia? Probably not but if it jacks the price up and ensures demand people will say anything.




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Thanks Kevin :).

Do you have a photo of the Zoa before it closed? Some are notoriously difficult to care for expert and beginners alike.