Are tiny rastas a thing?

[sbash]

These have slightly different colour ratios than normal rastas, a shorter skirt and about half the size:

Are they still rastas?

 

[Left Coast DJ]

Nice looking zoas!

 

[Eastlake]

I'd say so. The way that many zoas look can vary greatly from system to system. For instance, utter chaos in my system under LEDs look like what you would expect utter chaos to look like, in my friends tank they are under power compacts and turn a wicked solid tangerine color that, if she tried to sell them, she'd probably get lit up for saying that they were utter chaos. But I'd say that what you're seeing is how that color strain of zoanthid will react to your system, beautiful zoanthids you've got there regardless.

 

[sbash]

Thanks, yeah, they are quite nice... I picked up a bunch of frags at a good price from a guy tearing down his system, and from what I can tell, there are three slightly different variants of rastas in the mix.

 

[Heddon]

Size differences can be caused by placement in the tank. I know for a fact that some varieties grow larger under lower light. The reverse may be true for some zoas but of that I am not certain.

 

[sbash]

Size differences can be caused by placement in the tank. I know for a fact that some varieties grow larger under lower light. The reverse may be true for some zoas but of that I am not certain.

That's a really good point. I've seen some tanks that have huge zoa polyps (that I also have, we got them from the same source), while mine remain smaller...

So yeah, this guy likely would have had these two frags in different places in the tank. There are also a couple Greenbay Packers on different plugs and the intensity of the colouring is different (i.e. some are pale others are rich in colour)...

Neat!

 

[urban coral farmer]

I've seen rasta that are so small that you could bearly tell what they are the polyps on the colony where also spaces very far apart not sure what caused this since it was a trade in colony at a LFS.

 

[sbash]

I've seen rasta that are so small that you could bearly tell what they are the polyps on the colony where also spaces very far apart not sure what caused this since it was a trade in colony at a LFS.

Interesting, these ones are also kind of like that (you can almost tell in the picture). Maybe they were "normal" size when they were reproducing and shrunk because they were moved in the tank or something...

I'm going to throw these on my grow out rack (med-high light), I'll report back if they change.

Thanks everyone!