A Simple Zoa Garden for Your First Reef Tank?
- Jul 23, 2022
- Anshika Mishra
- 494 0 0
Add just a pop of color to your tank or cover your entire aquascape. Zoanthid gardens are perfect for a nano tank because they come in almost every color imaginable, can increase, and most Zoas are affordable.
Palytoxin Warning
We cannot discuss Zoas without discussing the Polytoxic warning. Palytoxin is a hazardous poison that can live within the soft tissues of the Zoas. Although more associated with Playthoas, certain Zoas can also contain this poison.
Palytoxin is no joke, as it can kill a human being. It becomes dangerous to humans when it somehow becomes airborne, usually through trying to scrub your rock, boiling live rock, or fragging Zoas and Palythoas.
But Zoas pose very little to zero danger to humans when just living and growing inside your saltwater aquarium. Still, it is wise always to wear gloves, goggles, and a face mask while handling Zoas.
Zoanthids: An Introduction
There are hundreds of species of Zoas out there, and they come in every color imaginable, and some you might not even be able to imagine. But, they vary somewhat wildly in their polyp size and growth rate.
In addition, Zoas are also a perfect beginner coral because they can survive in a wide variety of parameters, flow patterns, and lighting conditions. They can be grown in low to high light, but somewhere between 75 and 125 PAR works best for them.
While photosynthetic, they can benefit from weekly feeding with some finely ground-up coral food. Other than that, all they need is low to medium indirect flow and stable water conditions.
Creating a Zoa Garden
Usually, a Zoa garden is a small portion of your tank, or you create some Zoa garden on an island.
Zoanthids look their best when paired in a tank with other sized and textured corals. That said, many choose to build one large Zoa island with a few smaller islands. But, if you want to add some other corals like the Finger Leather Coral, you could probably get a lot more depth in the tank and utilize the vertical space much better than just the Zoa garden.
You don't have to make extraordinary gear changes to adapt the IM 14 to a Zoa garden. However, you can choose to replace the flared Nozel with a VCA random flow generator nozzle as that help decrease the flow and add some variability in the tank.
You can use the AI Prime 60 HD with a 12-inch flex arm for light. In this tank, a maximum intensity of 40% with 12,000 Kelvin would be perfect. Not overly blue, but blue enough to make all those colors pop.
Feel free to make adjustments, whether more or less blue, depending on your visual preferences. But, be aware that any adjustment you make could also change the amount of PAR in the tank. So, it will be a good idea to use a PAR meter and adjust the intensity accordingly.
A Zoa garden tank is excellent for many small fishes and inverts.
Make sure all your Zoas are dipped and in the water box quarantine tank for about two to three months. For some reason, Aiptasia loves to hide amongst Zoanthids, and rather than using a product like F-Aiptasia to go in there and individually kill those. It is recommended to go down the natural approach.
Tips for Great Zoa Garden
Use a Color Wheel
To make the colors pop, use a color wheel. Complimentary colors are those colors found on the opposite side of the color wheel. For example, red and green, orange and blue, and yellow and purple.
Putting complementary colors together, it will make the color seem brighter.
Give the Zoas Space to Grow
Given the right conditions, Zoanthids grow quickly. So, spacing out your Zoas will allow them to fill up the rock over two to three months.
Trim Frag Plug
Remove Zoanthids from frag plugs. Nothing is more unpleasant than staring at a frag plug instead of the beautiful Zoas on top of it.
So, using some bone cutters, remove as much of the frag plug as possible. And if you find this challenging because they are mounted on ceramic pins, consider purchasing aragonite-based plugs in the future, as they are way easier to chip away with bone cutters.
Use Extra Thick Glue
It is easy to attack Zoas to rock via their Frag plugs using a small amount of extra thick super glue. However, the great thing about Zoas is that they are really easy to care for.
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