Glad you brought that up! If it’s not a live sale, please look up a Zoa before you buy it!!
. Nothing worse than making a zoa garden and realizing Zoa A looks nearly identical to Zoa B despite them having different names or that Zoa C looked yellow online but irl it’s green and now you have a billion green zoas.
Great advice, I was purposely steering clear of the zoa families (I’ve heard about the toxins) but of course this was the one free frag from the livesale .. it is nice looking though.. possibly more in the future..Glad you brought that up! If it’s not a live sale, please look up a Zoa before you buy it!!
Many reasons for doing this:
You get a lot of valuable info with a quick google and it has changed my decision to buy a zoa many times. I always suggest googling any coral before you buy it (especially zoas, acros, and named euphyllia! ) because it provides a lot of really really useful info that will help you make an informed choice
- Finding out if it’s a good price
- Finding out if the pics are true to color (Zoanthids.com has been the only website so far that 100% matches the actual coral I get)
- Seeing the size of your zoa
- General difficulty of the zoa (is it a melter?)
Sounds like good advice, but for those of us who don't yet have zoa gardens and don't get to look at zoas all day, figuring out if the thing I'm looking at is the same as the thing online is a challenge. Next you'll say to buy from a reputable dealer who knows what they're selling. Good luck finding one. They make stuff up. For those who knows zoas, the BS is easy to smell. For those who don't yet, it's all roses.Glad you brought that up! If it’s not a live sale, please look up a Zoa before you buy it!!
Many reasons for doing this:
You get a lot of valuable info with a quick google and it has changed my decision to buy a zoa many times. I always suggest googling any coral before you buy it (especially zoas, acros, and named euphyllia! ) because it provides a lot of really really useful info that will help you make an informed choice
- Finding out if it’s a good price
- Finding out if the pics are true to color (Zoanthids.com has been the only website so far that 100% matches the actual coral I get)
- Seeing the size of your zoa
- General difficulty of the zoa (is it a melter?)
As a general rule, there are only a few types of palythoa that are seriously damaging (like toxic/nuclear greens). Many Zoanthids have it very very mild sometimes to the point where you can’t really tell if it has it at all. You should always use PPE when fragging zoas, but outside of that you should not encounter palytoxin at all. Zoas IMO, are very safe to handle provided you wear your eye protection and gloves, as well as work in a ventilated room and dont slice through polyps. I believe the nuclear greens are the worst about it, or maybe it’s just because they have the toxin and a lot of reefers have them so there are more run-ins with it. Whatever the case, don’t worry about palytoxin too much it’s one of those things that can be dangerous but is mostly emphasized and over reported (like shark attacks). Use your PPE and common sense and you should have no issues. I’m a stupid 16 year old who fragged them for a long time with my dad with zero PPE and I’m no worse for wear. I did go into fragging knowing that I’m not allergic to palytoxin (which is where it really gets dangerous) and having gotten briefed over safety (not touching my eyes, cutting away from my face, etc). If you want zoas, go for it! They are beautiful and I have many species (if you’re looking for colors/sizes/patterns/cheap but pretty ones I’m your gal) they are also one of the best if you’re looking to frag something to make a little extra dough to support your hobby. If you have any more questions, please, ask!
That’s true, but when I google something it often shows some pictures of similar zoas (like VW bloodshot and Vamps in Drag) so if you scroll through the pics individually you can see pretty quickly if there’s another name for the same zoa. Also, by scrolling through the pics you see them in all sorts of lighting so if you have similar looking zoas already you’ll probably see a pic that reminds you of zoas you already have and you can avoid that purchase. Sometimes R2R threads asking the difference between Zoa X and Zoa Y pop up and you can scan that really quick and decide if they’re different enough to warrant purchasing both or if you want to pass on it
dang, I guess I need to check out palys more. Very niceI think so zoas just tend to be small. I got these frags recently in a random pack and the heads are really small. More so than normal zoas. They are on 3/4 plugs
If you want bigger I would focus on palys. Most of them get to be a decent size. Some can get huge. These are On 1” plugs
I like it when they have eggcrate in the background so I can see. If all vendors had something like that for scale I wouldn’t feel the need to google as much
That one is BSA Kamikaze kush. I think WWC also named it something different but I forget the name.Sorry to hijack, but what is this? Fairy fart?
How can you tell those are radioactive dragon eye? They look nothing like the ones on tidal gardens to me.
