Zoa's running rampant...HELP

[FollyFish]

I sure this has been asked many times but I have two different types of zoa's that are currently over running my tank and there placement (see pics below). The fire and ice are on a rock island with some GSP so its not too bad and I still have some time before I should do something about it but the purple ones in the second pic and at the back of the first pic have taken over the rock and I'm not sure what the best was would be to remove some of them. I am able to take the rock out of the tank with some effort.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, FollyFish said:

I sure this has been asked many times but I have two different types of zoa's that are currently over running my tank and there placement (see pics below). The fire and ice are on a rock island with some GSP so its not too bad and I still have some time before I should do something about it but the purple ones in the second pic and at the back of the first pic have taken over the rock and I'm not sure what the best was would be to remove some of them. I am able to take the rock out of the tank with some effort.

Can’t be of much help but wow! I am jealous of you! 

 

I don’t there will every be a time when I have to say some coral is overrunning the tank! 
 

you could just take some nice sized clippings and post them in fb marketplace next door or Craigslist, I am sure people in you area may love some nice zoas 🙂

[Tired]

Honestly? I'd say you should sell those rocks and buy replacements, I bet you could get a lot for those colonies. Try Craigslist or your LFS, or forums for your area. It's probably best not to try to ship them, I would worry the rock would shift around in transit and mush them all, but I bet you could get some local interest. If nobody wants a giant colony, you could lop the rock into a few pieces with a chisel, carefully cut the zoa strands between the pieces, and have multiple small colonies. 

 

Partly because it would be hard to get them off the rock safely. Zoanthids are varying degrees of toxic, so you should NOT do something like scrub them or rinse the rock in hot water. You could chisel the outer layer off, but that would make a big mess of the rock. Scraping them off with some sort of blade would work, but would be extremely tedious, runs a risk of you cutting yourself with a zoa-coated blade somewhere in there, and wouldn't get all the little pieces. It would be easiest, safest, and likely most profitable for you to just take a little frag of each colony to keep, and sell the rest. 

If you end up doing anything that involves heavily fragging them, be careful about it. Wear gloves, and/or don't directly touch the zoas or the rock around them. Wash your hands afterward. Do NOT cut yourself. When you're done fragging them, put them in a container of saltwater for a bit to calm down, gently rinse them with tank water, and THEN put them back in the tank. Don't put them straight back into the tank if you do something like chiseling the rock into pieces. Throw out the calm-down water, don't pour it into the tank. 

 

For future use, you can try to corral them in with shell pieces. If you surround a zoa colony in shell bits, they grow onto the shell instead of onto the rock around them. Then it's easy to just cut the connection to the main colony and lift out the zoa-covered shell whenever needed, and you can sell or give away the resulting frags. Or you could just keep both of them on islands, since you know they like your tank enough to go a little wild. How long did it take for them to do that? 

It might also help to keep the colony a bit smaller, in general. The bigger a colony has, the more new polyps it can produce at a time. Once they get past a certain size, they really seem to start churning out new bits. 

[FollyFish]

2 hours ago, Tired said:

Honestly? I'd say you should sell those rocks and buy replacements, I bet you could get a lot for those colonies. Try Craigslist or your LFS, or forums for your area. It's probably best not to try to ship them, I would worry the rock would shift around in transit and mush them all, but I bet you could get some local interest. If nobody wants a giant colony, you could lop the rock into a few pieces with a chisel, carefully cut the zoa strands between the pieces, and have multiple small colonies. 

 

Partly because it would be hard to get them off the rock safely. Zoanthids are varying degrees of toxic, so you should NOT do something like scrub them or rinse the rock in hot water. You could chisel the outer layer off, but that would make a big mess of the rock. Scraping them off with some sort of blade would work, but would be extremely tedious, runs a risk of you cutting yourself with a zoa-coated blade somewhere in there, and wouldn't get all the little pieces. It would be easiest, safest, and likely most profitable for you to just take a little frag of each colony to keep, and sell the rest. 

If you end up doing anything that involves heavily fragging them, be careful about it. Wear gloves, and/or don't directly touch the zoas or the rock around them. Wash your hands afterward. Do NOT cut yourself. When you're done fragging them, put them in a container of saltwater for a bit to calm down, gently rinse them with tank water, and THEN put them back in the tank. Don't put them straight back into the tank if you do something like chiseling the rock into pieces. Throw out the calm-down water, don't pour it into the tank. 

 

For future use, you can try to corral them in with shell pieces. If you surround a zoa colony in shell bits, they grow onto the shell instead of onto the rock around them. Then it's easy to just cut the connection to the main colony and lift out the zoa-covered shell whenever needed, and you can sell or give away the resulting frags. Or you could just keep both of them on islands, since you know they like your tank enough to go a little wild. How long did it take for them to do that? 

It might also help to keep the colony a bit smaller, in general. The bigger a colony has, the more new polyps it can produce at a time. Once they get past a certain size, they really seem to start churning out new bits. 

Thank you for the advice Tired. In my little 25G tank every time I added zoa's they melted. In Jan of this year I up graded my tank to my current 50G and added the two little frags of zoa's with about 3 - 4 heads on each and forgot about them. A few months ago I was so happy that they were spreading and now I'm at 7 months with the new tank and well you seen the pics. The rock with the purple zoa's is about a 1.5 pounds and the size of the Harry Potter Goblet of Fire book (its a large L shape). The zoa's are across the top and down 2 of the 4 sides, they have not done the other sides because they are blocked by a duncan colony and a dendro colony.  I think you are right and I should try to sell the colony, rock and all.

 

The fire and ice ones, I love to look of that colony and I am lot more hesitant in selling it. I just wish that the fish still had access to the swim thru in the center of the rock.

 

I added a pic of my current tank. I am also a little concerned with the green mushroom colony but one thing at a time. Besides the last time I tried to remove some mushrooms I end up killing the poor things.

[Tired]

Your tank looks great! I can see how the mushrooms would be an issue, but they are striking. What coral is that all the way to the left, on the ground? Looks a bit like a huge-polyped, smoothish blasto. 

 

If you want to keep part of the rock the purple colony is on, a hammer and chisel will shear through reef rock nicely. Or a hammer and flathead screwdriver. You could lop off the zoa section, put it on the sandbed until you find a buyer, and then hand it off. Don't know what you could get for it, but I bet you'd find a buyer. And even if you didn't, at least they would be contained until you could decide if you wanted to chop the rock up further or what. 

 

For the fire and ice, you could always take a whack at them with an exacto knife. Not just a handheld razor blade like people use for fragging sometimes- bad idea with zoas. You need that handle on your blade. Just be careful of your fingers. Cutting a zoanthid and then yourself won't kill you, but you won't feel good at ALL, and now is a bad time to need to go to an ER for heart palpitations. Touching a bunch of angry, slimy zoanthids with non-cut fingers will also not go very well. I don't know that zoas are generally the most toxic out of their general group, but still- best to treat them like they could be seriously bad, palytoxin and all. Over-cautious is safer than under-cautious. 
Just don't be that guy who put himself in the hospital because he was scrubbing palys with steel wool and got his fingers. 

[FollyFish]

15 minutes ago, Tired said:

Your tank looks great! I can see how the mushrooms would be an issue, but they are striking. What coral is that all the way to the left, on the ground? Looks a bit like a huge-polyped, smoothish blasto.

Its a Dragon Soul Favia (about the size of a woman's fist) I've had it for about 4 yrs now. When I got it, it was only 1 head about the size of a quarter. Its in the naughty corner because every time something touches it, it sends out sweepers, probably the most actively aggressive coral I have in my tank.

[Tired]

Sheesh, favia polyps get that big? I've only seen the smaller-polyped varieties in person, I guess, or maybe I didn't recognize the chunkier ones. Putting one of those in my pico would lead to half the tank getting eaten by it, so I haven't really been looking into them, but I'll have to remember that variety when I can upgrade. It's really nice. 

[Tamberav]

Dragon soul favia is one of my favorites, totally underappreciated. Mine grew to about the size of yours but then my hammer stung half of it so I am starting over. Tank looks great btw. 

[jservedio]

So zoas aren't going to really smother anything but other, smaller, zoas and everything keeps them at bay without nuking them so I never worry about zoas. If you really want to trim them, use a razor blade to cut the mat so it's detached from the main colony and use tweezers to pull the zoas off the rock. They'll peel off as a mat, which is why you use the razor first. They are fine out of the tank for a really long time so take the whole rock out.

 

You can also just glue another coral right on top of them if you want. I've got both acros and montis growing directly out of a colony of zoas and it doesn't bother either. Take a look at my build thread which has a ton of pictures of lots of coral and even nems peacefully living up against zoas and palys.

 

[FollyFish]

So I sold the rock with the purple people eater zoas and when and got replacement rocks. The only rocks that I could find are white not purple/grey. Does anyone know how long they will have the white colour in a tank? Should I add extra bacteria because of the white rocks?

[Tired]

No need for bacteria. You should have plenty of bacteria on your other rocks to handle the tank bioload.

How long they stay white depends on the conditions of your tank, algae has to grow over them. You'll probably see green algae on them first, then coraline will gradually spread onto them. If you want to hasten it along, rubbing something with coraline on it (say, a seashell) against the rocks might spread some coraline spores onto it.

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, FollyFish said:

So I sold the rock with the purple people eater zoas and when and got replacement rocks. The only rocks that I could find are white not purple/grey. Does anyone know how long they will have the white colour in a tank? Should I add extra bacteria because of the white rocks?

In my experience, dry rock goes from white to entirely indistinguishable from good live rock in about 8-12 months in a mature system. However, it'll start looking much better in just a few months. Don't get worried if you see a lot of ugly GHA on the new dry rock for a few weeks - it's pretty normal for it to be loaded up with nutrients - it'll burn itself out just as quickly as it popped up. I've never added dry rock to a system without the dry rock getting GHA, though I do run a pretty high nutrient system so YMMV.

[FollyFish]

Ok, so it took me only 2 hours to sell the fire and ice zoa rock...gotta love facebook. Now I have space for a rock flower anemone rock! Super excited to try this. 

 

On the other hand still not sure what to do with the mushroom field. 

[Tired]

Oo, nice! Though I'll warn you, rock flowers may decide they want to go elsewhere. They like to have a crevice to shove their foot into, which can help keep them in place. They're less prone to wandering than other nems, at least. 

 

Betting you got more for the zoas than you paid in the first place. Someone was probably very happy with their purchase.

 

For the mushrooms, IIRC they'll detach if annoyed enough. You could put some ice in a bag with some sand (for weight) and leave it on 'em for a bit, see if they let go. From there, I bet you could find some takers- they're nice mushrooms. 

[FollyFish]

My first rock flower anemone. If it does well I will get another. My tank isnt a pretty as it was, but I hope that it will look better once all the new rocks match the old. 😁