Weird Idea

[Keraxis]

Has anyone tried to grow zoas on the shell of thier turbo snails.  As long as there isnt anything that could sting them this would be cool.

[AlanM]

My astrea grow coralline algae, but someone had a traveling Xenia in one of their pictures here about a year ago.

[gmerek2]

Mine hide a lot during the daylight hours not sure how well it would work in my tank.

[Keraxis]

My big one doesnt hide at all thats what gave me the idea.  Obviously they would not be open all day because the light changes as they climb or go down or under stuff but it might be a fun experment when i finally frag one.  I have things that can hurt the zoa though so i guess it will depend.

Edited August 9, 2014 by Keraxis

[YHSublime]

My urchin carries zoas around, they seem to do fine.

[BadCrab]

Should be fine. On the back of snails is the only way I've been able to grow some macros (red gracilaria!)

[zygote2k]

why not try gluing 20 or so different frags on snails and/or crabs?

[treesprite]

I had zoanthids glued on snails, and some started multiplying on the snails. Was really cool. Unfortunately, I did not take into account the fact that snails like to go up to the water line and just sit there with their shells partly out of the water. I wouldn't put them on snails again.

 

Now something that might be worth a try, would be to grow zoanthids on empty shells that just happen to be of the types and sizes  hermit crabs find desirable. For a while I had a hermit with yellow polyps wandering around, until the hermit wanted a bigger shell and killed a different snail. 

Edited August 12, 2014 by treesprite

[quang]

One time i had a PomPom crab that didn't have any anemones to carry around. One day i saw him with a single Zoa and used it as if it were an anemone. He carried it around for less than a week though. What was interesting is that the zoa stayed open the entire time.

[Keraxis]

One time i had a PomPom crab that didn't have any anemones to carry around. One day i saw him with a single Zoa and used it as if it were an anemone. He carried it around for less than a week though. What was interesting is that the zoa stayed open the entire time.

Zoa probably got used to it.  Pom Pom crabs are very careful with their anemone and will even spit it to grow another if they lose one.  The wierd thing is that they normally ship holding the anemone. 

[BadCrab]

Another fun treat with pom poms is that they will share the anemones they use (propagating them) to pomless pom poms. Its fairly common for them to pickup polyps, aiptasia, and even small majanos if the T. Producta they normally carry die.