Designing a Zoa Garden

Queenofreef · Jan 29, 2021

Strategically designing your zoa garden isn’t talked about enough.

Starting my zoa garden was overwhelming because of the amount of color combos and variations out there, and ihad no idea how to go about picking zoas or what would look good together. This technique of applying color theory to my zoa placement helped me a LOT.

I may just be crazy and put away too much thought into coral placement from a design perspective, but hopefully this is helpful for anyone looking to add new zoas or arrange their zoa garden! Let me know what you think

rogersb · Jan 29, 2021

I only watched the first 2 minutes and will watch the rest later, but I agree with everything you had up to that point and agree this isn't something that gets talked about much. When I was setting up my current tank I did a mock draw up with all the zoas I wanted placing them just like you're examples. AoG next to Midas next to PPE and so on. The contrast definitely makes the others look better.

After getting good color combos the only thing left is getting lucky and the zoas you picked for that color combo like your tank and grow.

Queenofreef · Jan 29, 2021

rogersb said:
I only watched the first 2 minutes and will watch the rest later, but I agree with everything you had up to that point and agree this isn't something that gets talked about much. When I was setting up my current tank I did a mock draw up with all the zoas I wanted placing them just like you're examples. AoG next to Midas next to PPE and so on. The contrast definitely makes the others look better.

After getting good color combos the only thing left is getting lucky and the zoas you picked for that color combo like your tank and grow.

Mock ups are the best for zoa planning!! I always tend to arrange as I go though, I’m forever finding new zoas that I didn’t consider before and now want ;Dead

And yeah that’s very true, no matter how much strategical planning you do zoas always decide what they want to do haha. But hey giving them a little guidance doesn’t hurt! Thanks for watching my video I appreciate it!

rogersb · Jan 29, 2021

This is that area that I was successful with in this side of the tank. I have other areas where one type of zoa for one reason or another dominates the other or one type completely withers away. For quite awhile I had hundreds of twizzlers up against hundreds of rastas until for some reason the twizzlers decided to fade away. They are still there but it's not like the colony it was.

346700984 · Jan 29, 2021

rogersb said:
This is that area that I was successful with in this side of the tank. I have other areas where one type of zoa for one reason or another dominates the other or one type completely withers away. For quite awhile I had hundreds of twizzlers up against hundreds of rastas until for some reason the twizzlers decided to fade away. They are still there but it's not like the colony it was.

Good to know about some overtaking others as we just started our zoa garden. So far we have a designer colony that’s Gatorade zoa mixed with some others like Fire & Ice and Armor of God and another type that’s yellow skirt/lime green. Yours looks great.

zukihara · Feb 1, 2021

+1 for some color theory. I did watch and my first thought was it would be much easier for most people starting a zoa garden to group like colors together next to groups of contrasting colors. Key word being group, instead of trying to weave each little frag or small colony together.

Now tackle using various textures to increase overall eye appeal

sp1187 · Feb 1, 2021

nice vid. very informative.
in addition to your info, I like to play with height leaving the frag plug on some, cutting it off on others.

Legendary Corals · Feb 17, 2021

Loving this thread, and amazing content! We're usually obsessed with collecting all of these corals that sometimes we forgo the idea of a beautiful display tank. Placing contrasting colors with similar sized zoanthids can create striking results! It's an exciting idea to see if the hobby shifts towards not only collecting corals, but also to creating aquascape designs, similar to the freshwater community.