Zoa Frustration - Thoughts

Lunger50 · Apr 26, 2018

In light of the recent do you even Zoa poll. Well I sure would like to but.....

65 gallon tank setup in January, with almost all good live rock. About 55 lbs

Maxpect RSX 200w, Aournd 75% Blues, 60% whites at peak for about 4 hours
2 Icecap 2k gyres
1 Tunze 6025
Tunze 9004 Skimmer
Tunze 3162 Filter with Filter floss GWO, Filter Floss, Carbon, Purigen

2 Clowns
Fairy Wrasse
Tailspot
Rainfords goby

Salinty 1.025
Alk - 7.5-8 ish
Cal - 400
Mag - 1500
Nitrate - 5-10
Phos - .03 - .05

Transferred some Zoas over from my Biocube, they are happy happy, and you can see them just left of center bottom in FTS. acans, rics, leathers birdsnest, duncans and some acros all doing pretty well and growing.

But... I add new zoas, 3 frags over the past couple months they all do the same thing. For the first 4 or 5 days they are open and loving it and so am I,.Then they half open, then they close. A couple had some algae on them so I removed and dipped all three frags in Peroxide + Tanks water. Checked for pest with a magnifying glass...Nadda. One of those frags seems to be on the mend and is opening now. The other two, one has yet to open, 1 only slightly does and is shrinking and losing polyps. These frags are all in very similar positions to the happy ones left of center. LFS I get them from runs same lights and same salt.

Confused as to why for a few days the look fantastic....to this?

Thoughts?

Brew12 · Apr 27, 2018

Any crabs in the tank that may be picking on them? Or any chance a fish is picking at them or rubbing against them?

Jimbo662 · Apr 27, 2018

Were the water parameters of the original tank similar? the Mag seems a little high.

Lunger50 · Apr 27, 2018

No crabs or fish bugging them.

Parameters of original tank were similar. The zoas that are happy came from that tank. Couldn't tell you the parameters of the tanks at the LFS the frags came from. But I know they use the same salt at the same salinity, with the same lights so I would assume pretty close. What baffles me is the fact that for the first 4-5 days they look great. Then close. Weird.

Lunger50 · May 1, 2018

2nd and third picture, same frag, has now been reduced to 2 or 3 tiny polyps. First pic still has all the polyps but has not opened a smidge in weeks.

Just removed and inspected again. No pests but a green algae on it, so another peroxide dip and scrub with soft tooth brush.

Ughh, need to get this figured out as a big part of my plan for this tank involved lots of colorful zoas, and rics.