SPS difficulty

flyfisherman · Sep 20, 2023

3 wks I've left these freebie zoas in a bag in the laundry room. The things are still alive. If you think keeping zoas alive means you can keep sps alive, I'm not sure I agree...!

Poseidon03 · Sep 20, 2023

And yet, if you put them in the tank, they will melt

. Zoas will always be zoas and a mystery to me.

Give acros good light, good flow and good parameters, they will thrive.

jda · Sep 20, 2023

I have had some zoas that are harder to keep than most SPS... really sensitive to traces that melt if you don't change water or supplement, die if you try and frag them, etc. Others grow like weeds.

Generally speaking, though, this statement is more true than not.

BiGGiePauls33 · Sep 20, 2023

flyfisherman said:
3 wks I've left these freebie zoas in a bag in the laundry room. The things are still alive. If you think keeping zoas alive means you can keep sps alive, I'm not sure I agree...!

I've had some survive being outside for the New England winter and then in the spring come back to life once that rock went back in water.

PotatoPig · Sep 20, 2023

From threads I see on here my impression of life running an SPS tank:

ScottB · Sep 26, 2023

BiGGiePauls33 said:
I've had some survive being outside for the New England winter and then in the spring come back to life once that rock went back in water.

We call those palys and I swear I have seen the same.

InvaderJim · Sep 26, 2023

I have acros growing just fine, but I have absolutely zero luck with zoas. They all just melt.

Mr. Roboto · Sep 26, 2023

I have a candy cane coral head that has miraculously popped back up after being in the dark for over 6 month in horrid water conditions. SPS in that tank though...

DJF · Sep 26, 2023

It depends- were you monitoring the zoas daily? Then there could be a chance… if you forgot about them and just found them again- probably not

Definitely means you can grow Xenia or gsp tho!

flyfisherman · Oct 9, 2023

They are still freaking alive all of them. Sitting in same spot in laundry room. Captain jerks lol.

flyfisherman · Dec 2, 2023

Still alive, the polyps were open before i picked up the bag.

Kasrift · Dec 2, 2023

flyfisherman said:
Still alive, the polyps were open before i picked up the bag.

Is this an experiment at this point and do you not want to put those in your tank?

randomfishdude · Dec 2, 2023

I think thoes things deserve to be in a tank now.

Also I've never found any coral hard. Probobly because I don't touch anything or change anything.

DJF · Dec 2, 2023

I bet the zoas would argue that they aren’t the jerks

exnisstech · Dec 2, 2023

I've had paly grandois and ricordia in a dark brute container with just a power head for six months and they were still alive when I went to use the rock.
While I'm no master at SPS I have quite a few that are doing well. Zoas not so much. I've tried them through out they years and they all died or so I thought. I have a very small colony that appeared as a single polyp and is starting to show some growth but I haven't added a zoa in over 5 years so I don't have any idea what they are. The one thing I'll give zoa over sps is they don't die as quickly. They let you watch then wither away. Dang stick can look great when I go to bed and be totally white stripped of flesh by morning.

SamMule · Dec 2, 2023

I tried something similar with an asterina star in a frag cup I got a couple of years ago. Never opened the cup and that dang starfish lasted almost a year.
And let's not get started on vermetid snails...