Best tips to create a zoa garden

[Chirag96]

Hey guys, I started my reef tank 2 months ago. Over the past 2 weeks I have added 10 frags of zoanthids on a huge live rock in my tank hoping to create a zoa garden. Any recommendations to make this happen? Boost the growth and health of zoas.
Following are some of the species I got-
Utter chaos
Pink zipper
Bambam
2 Scrambled eggs
Sunny D
Mandarin
La Laker
Blonde eye

 

[Tavero]

Never below 0.05 mg/l PO4 and 1 mg/l NO3 or they will melt. (Personal experience). More is better. Large polyps like Utter Chaos, Sunny d, Magicians etc can be fed fine food like reef roids when flow is shut off.
Small ones like la lakers only seem to feed on dissolved nutrients.
Iodine is a meme.
Good luck with your zoa garden

 

[Chirag96]

Never below 0.05 mg/l PO4 and 1 mg/l NO3 or they will melt. (Personal experience). More is better. Large polyps like Utter Chaos, Sunny d, Magicians etc can be fed fine food like reef roids when flow is shut off.
Small ones like la lakers only seem to feed on dissolved nutrients.
Iodine is a meme.
Good luck with your zoa garden

So I don't need to dose iodine?

 

[Tavero]

I have never seen any advantage by dosing elemental iodine into a tank. I've only used it for dipping freshly cut or sick frags.
The risk of overdosing it is way to high in my opinion.

 

[wtdenk]

I like using smaller separate rocks for each kind of zoa. You can place them next to each other for the garden effect you're after and it makes it much easier to manage if you need to remove a rock for any type of maintenance. Most importantly you risk one colony overtaking the rest over time when you have them all together on the same rock.

 

[landlubber]

buy a good pair of tweezers and get used to the idea that you're going to have to essentially prune your garden fairly often. assuming they're sharing the same rock, even when grown under the same conditions they're going to spread at different rates and to keep that sharp separated look you essentially have to pluck the offshoots.

 

[Chirag96]

buy a good pair of tweezers and get used to the idea that you're going to have to essentially prune your garden fairly often. assuming they're sharing the same rock, even when grown under the same conditions they're going to spread at different rates and to keep that sharp separated look you essentially have to pluck the offshoots.

But I haven't seen a single new polyp grow in the past month.

 

[landlubber]

But I haven't seen a single new polyp grow in the past month.

reefing is a marathon not a sprint. once a tank is stable things get moving along a lot quicker.

 

[MONTANTK]

Don’t overthink zoas and Palys. For the most part they’re going to be pretty hardy as long as you have adequate nutrients. The colorations of many Palys can be very different in various lighting. From personal experience, the lowering the lighting the better

 

[CRath]

I've got a zoa rock that took about 6 moths to cover. I Saw a great difference when I started dosing iodide. Iodide leaches into your rock structure less and is still bioavailable for the zoas to take in. My colors and growth saw the biggest difference when I did that. I also suggest gluing them and essentially forgetting about the rock. The more you mess with them the more likely they will be irritated and not grow. For flow I find that they like to be blown around pretty heavily as well as receive a moderate amount of light. extra flow and enough light ensures that they spend more time growing outward rather than upward. I'll attach a picture of it at the start and what it looks like now 3 years later.