Zoa Retrospect

[sen5241b]

Corals kill other corals so slow that sometimes you don't even notice. I once had flourishing plates, green star polyps (I had to cut them back regularly) and blue and green mushrooms. It was after I introduced zoas, placing them upstream of the other corals, that the other corals listed above began to very slowly recede and eventually die off. It happened so slowly I never attributed the die off to the zoas until it was too late. Did I call this right?

[hypertech]

While I suppose it is not impossible it seems highly unlikely to me.

[smallreef]

I think this COULD be a factor IF you have alot of crabs or snails constantly messing with the zoas..

They do release something into the watercolumn when they are constantly irritated, but i am not sure if only a few small rocks of them would make enough of a difference, if i remember correctly, the article in my marine book it described a seafloor covered being irritated and thus sending toxins

[zygote2k]

zoas and palythoas don't usually release palytoxin unless they are being cut or severely disturbed. a crab or snail wouldn't trigger that kind of response. as far as the toxicity to other corals, I would think that you'd have to have a much larger population of zoas than other corals. just like algal succession, there is certainly coral succession. same goes with live rock- only a few of the original cryptic population survives over the years.

[sen5241b]

My green star polyps grew like crazy and I had to cut them back every couple months. I had so much of them I actually ended up just throwing some it out. THEN I put a colony of zoas, a few inches across, just upstream of the GPS. And yes, occasionally a crab or snail would crawl right across it.

[zygote2k]

what is the current population of corals in your tank? how old is your tank? are the water parameters stable?

[sen5241b]

I took the tank down recently but the water was absolutely stable.