maintaining n & p for zoas?

[Baldy]

Hello,

In my current setup I'm running 2 phosban 150s. One with bioplastics, and the other with carbon and gfo. This has reduced the nitrates and phosphates in my tank to 0, even on the Hanna checker for phos.

Problem is that I'm trying to keep zoas, and can't seem to get them to survive. I have a bigger colony of emerald plays that have survived fine, some oreos that took off, then melted and died, and was left with 2 frags I had on a shelf. One survived melting barely and is still barely hanging on, and the other had half covered its frag rock. I moved the latter down and glued it to the live rock, and its melting now too. I thought it was hermits picking at them before so I've pulled a ton of them out, but it seems to not be helping

Should I be removing some of the bioplastics and gfo to try and maintain a low level of n & p?

[daniella3d]

Problem with zoanthids is that they are filter feeder a lot, as much as they need light.

They are extremely sensitive to any change in the water, especially alkalinity and salinity, so a very stable environment is needed.

Some variety of zoanthids are tough and practically impossible to kill, wereas others are nearly impossible to keep.

The tanks that do best with zoanthids are dedicated zoanthids tanks with lots of them. They do love each other companies.

They are sensitive to chimical war, and using GFO and other nitrates removal will be detrimental for many of them.

Usually the paly will do better because they feed out of micro plankton in the aquarium. I currently have a rock of brown large palythoas (probably the kind that has palytoxine ) and they have been in an aquarium that has only the room light for about 1 month now. They eat like little pigs...any food that I put in there and they remained perfectly healthy without any lighyt. The other zoanthis in there are now about 3" long searching for light and looking like hell because they do need light.

Some need strong ligth some don't. It is extremely hard to please them all.

This is one of the most difficult coral I have ever had...zoanthids are finicky and can be extremely hard to keep. I feed mine Chromaplex and that seem to help a lot. Dosing with Vitamin C also help a lot with the melting.

I dose vitamin C each day now and I have not had a colony melt for a long time.

Originally Posted by TheNewGuy

Hello,

In my current setup I'm running 2 phosban 150s. One with bioplastics, and the other with carbon and gfo. This has reduced the nitrates and phosphates in my tank to 0, even on the Hanna checker for phos.

Problem is that I'm trying to keep zoas, and can't seem to get them to survive. I have a bigger colony of emerald plays that have survived fine, some oreos that took off, then melted and died, and was left with 2 frags I had on a shelf. One survived melting barely and is still barely hanging on, and the other had half covered its frag rock. I moved the latter down and glued it to the live rock, and its melting now too. I thought it was hermits picking at them before so I've pulled a ton of them out, but it seems to not be helping

Should I be removing some of the bioplastics and gfo to try and maintain a low level of n & p?

[ScubaSteve]

It really depends on the zoa. I've found in the past when my n and p were high that certain colonies took off while others withered. Now that I am carbon dosing and my nutrients are nil, the ones that were withering are taking off and the others are slowly dwindling.

Reall, it seems some are like SPS while others like dirty water. The guy to ask though is zoaElite.