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Natalia's Nuvo 8 Zoa Garden...RETIRED!


natalia_la_loca

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natalia_la_loca

From Aquascapers I got the Searchlights and Aquafresh. I got a bunch o' stuff from Legendary :ninja:

I've got to wait forever before I can take a shipment though because I'm going to be out of town a lot :(

I'm still eyeing those Dalmations, though. I may add them to the shipment if somebody else hasn't snapped them up.

 

Anybody know how many different zoas you can fit in 10g tank? I guess i could always add some to my 4g tank :lol:

 

oooh, can't wait to see what you get from legendary. Looks like someone got the dalmatians.

 

IME you can fit a lot of different zoas in a small tank. After the Aquascapers order arrives, I'll stop ordering new zoas and just let everyone grow out. I don't want my nuvo to look like a frag tank :)

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Yeah, I'm on travel next week so I asked them to wait until the week after. Worse yet, one of the corals I ordered from Darwin needs two weeks to heal, and I'm out of town AGAIN the week after that. So he's going to hold them until the second week of March. Maybe all the frags will grow into colonies by then :D

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natalia_la_loca

So I got some (bad, very bad) pix of my larger zoas eating Formula One pellets, ground up in a coffee grinder to about 0.5 mm max.

 

LC Petroglyphs--note pellet in mouth--nom nom nom

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Caribbean "twilight zone" zoas from Coral Morphologic

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another shot of the petroglyphs

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this is the best one I got...look at that tentacle moving the pellet delicately toward the open mouth...feed me seymour

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natalia_la_loca

It works really well. In addition to the small pieces, there is a fine dust that might be beneficial for smaller zoas (although I still have yet to see a convincing feeding response from them).

 

One reason I decided to try Formula 1 is that it has a high fish content. Coral Frenzy does too. I saw an interesting research paper (in case the link dies, it's by Amada Álvarez Reimer, "Feeding Behavior in the Hawaiian Zoanthids Palythoa and Zoanthus," 1971) that found that while palythoas would grab just about anything, zoas only responded to fish-based feeds. Which would seem to corroborate anecdotes that zoas thrive best in systems with fish in them.

 

And what exactly were they feeding to the zoas to get this wonderful feeding response?

 

giphy.gif

 

FISH STICKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Breaded fish sticks.

 

gotta love science :happydance: here's a current FTS.

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Little bit of cyano starting to take hold. I just got some KZ Coral Snow and dosed it last night, hopefully that will help clear it up. The ring of fire colony is almost certainly a goner, but a couple of lone survivors are sticking it out.

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natalia_la_loca

ugh, so busy lately. But the tanks are doing well :) and I've gotten a new (to me) camera, formerly owned by the excellent people at Pacific East Aquaculture. I'll post some pictures as soon as I get the settings to my liking. Pix below are from ye olde iphone.

 

new zoas settling in. YR Peachy Blues polyp has been given a place of honor. Now grow please.

16397796517_e7bce34d97_z_d.jpg

 

eagle eyes, whammin watermelons and CGA splattered melons. The splattereds lost their splatter for a while, but are now getting it back. O the mysteries of the zoa.

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sunrise on the zoa farm

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Current shot of rings of fire. I'd just about lost hope for them, but several are actually recovering. The bad news is that a couple of rastas have the same thing. Still not sure what it is, but my wild guess is that it's bacterial in origin. at any rate, it may not be a death sentence. I haven't done any kind of treatment other than fixing the kH spike I had a few weeks ago.

15982916634_dbd71d48a0_z_d.jpg

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ugh, so busy lately. But the tanks are doing well :) and I've gotten a new (to me) camera, formerly owned by the excellent people at Pacific East Aquaculture. I'll post some pictures as soon as I get the settings to my liking. Pix below are from ye olde iphone.

 

new zoas settling in. YR Peachy Blues polyp has been given a place of honor. Now grow please.

16397796517_e7bce34d97_z_d.jpg

 

eagle eyes, whammin watermelons and CGA splattered melons. The splattereds lost their splatter for a while, but are now getting it back. O the mysteries of the zoa.

16603931521_5e81e720f5_z_d.jpg

 

sunrise on the zoa farm

16605091985_20bebf8b0a_z_d.jpg

 

Current shot of rings of fire. I'd just about lost hope for them, but several are actually recovering. The bad news is that a couple of rastas have the same thing. Still not sure what it is, but my wild guess is that it's bacterial in origin. at any rate, it may not be a death sentence. I haven't done any kind of treatment other than fixing the kH spike I had a few weeks ago.

15982916634_dbd71d48a0_z_d.jpg

If it is bacterial, I wonder if sanolife mic-F would give them an edge. Adding a probiotic would be a proactive measure you could take without being drastic.
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Love those shots of the GBG's :wub:

At one time my whammin watermelons were my fastest growing zoas. Then they melted and disappeared in about a week for no apparent reason. I still miss them :tears:

I do have some candy apples that are pretty similar, though, and they've been taking over the rocks that they're on :)

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natalia_la_loca

Love those shots of the GBG's :wub:

At one time my whammin watermelons were my fastest growing zoas. Then they melted and disappeared in about a week for no apparent reason. I still miss them :tears:

I do have some candy apples that are pretty similar, though, and they've been taking over the rocks that they're on :)

yup, the melon/eagle eye morphs have been the most prolific growers for me too. I hope I don't lose them...although fortunately they are inexpensive and easy to come by :)

 

it's great that your candy apples are doing well for you! I couldn't get mine to thrive.

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  • 2 weeks later...
natalia_la_loca

OK, my Aquascapers order arrived yesterday. Not getting any more zoas for a while, this time for real!

 

BTW, I got really busy and never got around to removing my greenbanded goby who was stuck in the back chamber. And then the other day he found his way back into the tank again :) He looks totally fine, not thin at all. The gobies are moving sand to dig tunnels under and around the rockwork lately, which is great for combating a small cyano outbreak I'm having (or more likely diatoms, my turbo snail eats it).

 

It feels great to have vice zoas again (left). Aquascapers said the ultra searchlights I ordered "went MIA," so they replaced them with a couple of frags, one with a combo of two different (and rather unimpressive) zoas, and another with a blue/green morph that looks nice. Would have been better if they'd told me about this before they shipped, but the vice zoas were what I really wanted and they look fantastic. The ones on the right are Specters from Cherry Corals.

 

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Signs of recovery from the Rings of Fire are unambiguous now. It's just fantastic, I was sure that colony was a goner. The two rasta polyps are still bad, but the rest are doing well. I do have a lot of small vermetid snails in this tank...wondering if they're irritating those polyps. It's hard to say because a lot of the zoas are near vermetids but doing fine.

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Several of the new zoas are sprouting new heads already :happydance: YR Peachy Blues, 1 new head

 

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Oompa Loompas, 2 new heads!!! :haha:

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Awesome! If my searchlights do well you can get a frag from me ☺

Watch those vermetid snails. Mine got out of control. From what I could tell they slowed the growth of my zoas even in cases where they weren't obviously irritating them.

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natalia_la_loca

Awesome! If my searchlights do well you can get a frag from me ☺

Watch those vermetid snails. Mine got out of control. From what I could tell they slowed the growth of my zoas even in cases where they weren't obviously irritating them.

 

Ooooh, that would be fantastic :) maybe we could do a trade when some of my new frags grow out.

 

You're probably right about the vermetids! I've started removing them.

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  • 2 weeks later...
natalia_la_loca

Went on a four-day business trip last week. I wanted to make sure none of my new frags were bulldozed by snails during the trip, so I glued everything down before leaving. A few zoas still have this weird bacterial disease thing, and there is still an ugly little patch of cyano and hair algae (so far, the KZ Coral Snow treatment has been a disappointment), but most of the zoas look happy. The oompas have ANOTHER new head (total of 5 now), and the petroglyphs have 2 new ones (total of 6)!

 

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While in the airport I saw this beautiful "aquarium" with tulle jellyfish and felt sponges:

 

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When I returned, all my corals and my damsel tank were happy, but two of my greenbanded gobies were gone :( I found one of them dried up outside the tank. The other one is still missing, but I suspect it jumped too as I would have found it by now if it had gotten into the back chamber. So now I have just one little GBG. :(

 

I see that GBGs are available online again, but I'm not sure I want to risk the lives of more gobies. I don't have any truly reliable way to prevent their jumping because they are so tiny. I could try a really fine mesh, but I think that would affect light output significantly, in addition to being unsightly. Not sure what to do.

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Went I could try a really fine mesh, but I think that would affect light output significantly, in addition to being unsightly. Not sure what to do.

 

CG on the zoas popping new heads. Your zoas look happy at least.

 

Maybe you could use tulle as your "screen" for the top. Won't rust, pretty fine stuff, cheap. Shouldn't block much light.

 

What airport had the "jellyfish" in it? That is way cooler than a "jellyfish" art installation I saw in the (I think) Montreal airport!

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natalia_la_loca

 

CG on the zoas popping new heads. Your zoas look happy at least.

 

Maybe you could use tulle as your "screen" for the top. Won't rust, pretty fine stuff, cheap. Shouldn't block much light.

 

What airport had the "jellyfish" in it? That is way cooler than a "jellyfish" art installation I saw in the (I think) Montreal airport!

 

Hmmm, I'll have to look at the fabric store for some tulle or fine mesh and see if that would work. Of course it would not prevent their jumping out by way of the back chamber, which they can definitely get into by means unknown.

 

The jellyfish installation was at Portland airport. Really lovely in person.

 

here's a pic from this evening...I put the vice zoas in the same place where my original vice zoa colony was. I can't get a good photo of them under actinics, but I just love their soft blue and pink colors. And they are eating :happydance:

 

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Love all these little pops of color. When you figure out how to photograph them well with the actinics, let me know. It's frustrating that I can't get good shots of them aglow.

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