One zoanthid colony not opening

Hey guys..
I have a 40 breeder that is newly established. The cycle completed about a month ago. I waited 2 weeks and added a pair of true percula clowns and 2 zoa frags. The following week I added another 2 zoa frags. Everything is opening up nicely except this one frag/colony that I bought. It's some sort of bright green zoa, this particular piece has about 40 polyps on it.

I moved it around once or twice with no luck. My lighting is a 36" 6 bulb Tek light. The water chemistry is spot on, Ca is 450. I don't have a Mg test kit, but I have been using Brightwell's Reef Builder which has Mg in it.

Any tips?

 

I had the same problem recently - I eventually figured out that I had low-light zoas - once I moved them to lower in the tank, they opened up and remained open. When I had them near the surface, they would not open and actually got burned from the halide - the tips would shed skin, they would try to open, then close, peal and try to open again until I moved to lower in the tank. Perhaps you have the same situation?


(I moved this thread to the coral board)

 

are they being blasted with flow? also it wouldn't hurt to look at them carefully for zoa eating nudis

 

Thanks for the reply Matt. This colony is on the bottom of my tank so I can't really go much lower, but I might be able to hide them in a shadow from LR.
My light is about 18" from the surface of the tank.. And the place I got them from had a 400w halide of their shallow coral tank.

I'll keep my eyes out for peeling though. Thanks again.

 

Just keep moving them around and playing with all different types of lighting and flow situations. I've noticed that with my zoas, some of them really picky and some aren't.

 

I gave all of the frags a nice look over and didn't see anything. I gave them all a dip in a tank water/hydrogen peroxide mix and came across about 10 flat worms, most of which came from the green colony that I am having my current issue with. Could this be the cause?

 

That may be, they may have been too irritated to open. Give them a little time to recover. Best of luck.

 

I had a problem like this months ago also. I had a zoa colony that was killed by zoanthid eating spiders. This could be something for you to look into. You prob. would of seen a few fall off the colony when you did the dip. they are kinda hard to see though. Good Luck...hope they pull through!

 

Thanks guys. This place is great for quick and friendly help.

Is there anything I could do to keep the flatworm population to a minimum? In the past I have seen few clear flatworms moving around on the glass/lr/bb, nothing alarming- probably have only saw 2-3 within the whole life time of the tank. I wasn't aware of any red ones until I did the dip today.
I know that six-lines are good for flat worms but I wasn't planning on keeping one. They're cool fish so I guess I could if I need to...

Thanks again