Premium Online Zooanthid Corals to add to Your Reef Tank
With the many distinctive shapes and colors one can find on a coral reef or in a well-kept reef aquarium, calling Zooanthid corals the flowers of the coral reef is an easy and apt analogy. The fleshy stalk crowned by a vibrantly colored oral disc closely resembles the shape and color of a flower and an entire colony of zoa corals on a rock looks just like a stand of flowers commonly seen in a garden or botanical center. Even the name “zoa” (Gr., meaning “animal or life”) and “anthos” (Gr., meaning “flower”) reinforces the analogy. Symbolism or not, Zooanthid corals are some of the most popular online coral frags we sell and we love them as much as our clients do. The electric colors on zoa frags come from the photosynthetic and symbiotic zooxanthellae algae living in the tissue of the zoas. Zooanthid corals are native to most of the world’s tropical oceans, with most found in the shallow, warm waters of the Pacific and the Caribbean.
Zooanthid Coral Care Guide
Experience Level
Zoas are fairly tolerant and can be a good coral for beginning coralheads as long as the water quality is good, the system is fully cycled and care is taken with lighting, flow and placement.
Optimal Water Quality Parameters
- Temperature: 77-82F, 25-28C
- pH: 8.1-8.3
- dKH: 7-11 (125-200ppm CaCO3 equivalent)
- Calcium: 375-450ppm
- Magnesium: 1275-1350ppm
- Salinity: 35ppt
- Ammonia (NH3): less than 0.1ppm
- Nitrite (NO2): less than 0.2ppm
- Nitrate (NO3): less than 0.2ppm
- Phosphates (PO4): less than 0.03ppm
Lighting Preferences:
Generally speaking, zoa coral frags prefer moderate lighting most often found in the middle of the water column. However, remember that your lighting is feeding the symbiotic zooxanthellae providing the electric colors on each polyp, so you will have to observe your zoas closely and may have to experiment with placing each zooanthid frag to find just the right spot to get the colors to “pop.” The hardest part of this is always having the patience to wait at least a couple of weeks for the zooxanthellae to adjust to the new level before trying another location. Unless the color is starting to bleach out, waiting even longer is usually better. That’s how a beginning coralhead can start to develop the experience, intuition and skill essential for success with corals of all kinds.
Water Flow Preferences:
Zoanthids tend to prefer moderate levels of shifting, irregular flows, which animate the polyps, deliver food and remove digested waste on reefs around the world. To achieve the full extension on a zoa frag, start off with shifting, laminar flows but monitor the posture of each polyp closely, as too much flow will cause the polyp to retract to protect itself. You want the oral disc and feeding tentacles of each zoanthid to be fully deployed and turgid to provide maximum exposure to the symbiotic algae. Powerheads with controllers or the new generation of DC wavemakers make this fairly simple. In time, you can experiment with pulsing, irregular flows of varying intensity to see how your zoas react.
Placement Considerations:
As always, after quarantining your new zoa frags in a dedicated quarantine system and drip-acclimating them to your system, start your zoas off in an area of your tank with lower lighting and flow than their planned destination. This will allow them to adjust and allow you to closely monitor them for color, posture, polyp extension and other indicators. If, after careful observation for at least two weeks, you feel they are ready for a little more light, move them to an area with more intense lighting and continue to monitor closely.
However, it’s important to keep a couple of other considerations in mind:
- Zoanthids can be aggressive and will sting anything nearby that cannot move out of range. So make sure to allow some space to ensure that they don’t sting or get sting by other inverts.
- The toxin delivered by a zoanthid sting can also result in a mild to severe reaction in the keeper, depending on their sensitivity to spider bites, bee stings and other toxins. It’s always best to wear surgical gloves when handling nearly all aquatic animals. This is especially true when handling corals.
Feeding Considerations:
Although the photosynthetic algae will provide nearly all the nutrition each polyp and the zooanthid colony needs, they do respond well to supplemental feeding with live Artemia nauplii, rotifers, prepared coral food and other planktonic foods. Just make sure not to overdo it and always test your water quality on a regular, ongoing basis to ensure that you’re not trashing your WQ by overfeeding your fish, corals and other inverts. Use a turkey baster or pipette to gently squirt these foods upstream of your zoa colonies and let the food drift to the feeding tentacles of each polyp as it does on a coral reef. You may want to turn off or choose the “Feeding” mode on your powerheads before feeding.
Beautiful, Vibrant and Clean Online Zoa Frags from CoralFrags.com
Before any of our zoanthids or other coral frags are shipped to a client, they are carefully quarantined and screened to help ensure that each frag arrives without undesirable reef pests. We work hard to proactively monitor and manage the water chemistry in each of our coral propagation systems to ensure that all our coral frags are healthy and vibrant before being sold to our clients. These are just a few of the ways that we ensure that our online coral frags are the best, healthiest and most colorful specimens available anywhere. Thanks for browsing our collection and trusting us to be your preferred online coral frag provider. We’re working hard every day to earn and maintain that trust!