Hi guys,
I'd like to pick your brains on Zoa colour, or more precisely, the lack thereof.
A few months back I got a small colony of green and blue zoas with some live rock. While transporting the rock to my house, some of the zoa polyps got a bit squashed between the rocks and were damaged.
Here are the zoas after I broke the small piece of live rock they were on from the rest of the rock, and you can see the mangled polyp in the front, at the bottom of the colony.
I later cut the a smaller piece of rock, with just the mangled polyp, from the rest and moved it to my sump. Over time some red hairy algae that was on the live rock when I got it started spreading all over the still coloured zoas, and eventually that whole colony died away.
The mangled one however pulled through in my sump, and started sprouting new polyps, at which point I moved it back to my display. It has now multiplied quite a bit, but the part I don't get is that every new polyp is as brown and ugly as the one mangled polyp was.
Here they are:
Where does the colour in zoas come from? Is it genetic, or is it from another source that gets passed from one polyp to another? (zooxanthellae?)
I imagine my water and lights are fine, because all my other zoas are fine. (see the red above them in the second photo)
Will the colour ever come back to these, or are they doomed to be eternally dull? If it will come back, is there a way I can help them along?
I'd like to pick your brains on Zoa colour, or more precisely, the lack thereof.
A few months back I got a small colony of green and blue zoas with some live rock. While transporting the rock to my house, some of the zoa polyps got a bit squashed between the rocks and were damaged.
Here are the zoas after I broke the small piece of live rock they were on from the rest of the rock, and you can see the mangled polyp in the front, at the bottom of the colony.
I later cut the a smaller piece of rock, with just the mangled polyp, from the rest and moved it to my sump. Over time some red hairy algae that was on the live rock when I got it started spreading all over the still coloured zoas, and eventually that whole colony died away.
The mangled one however pulled through in my sump, and started sprouting new polyps, at which point I moved it back to my display. It has now multiplied quite a bit, but the part I don't get is that every new polyp is as brown and ugly as the one mangled polyp was.
Here they are:
Where does the colour in zoas come from? Is it genetic, or is it from another source that gets passed from one polyp to another? (zooxanthellae?)
I imagine my water and lights are fine, because all my other zoas are fine. (see the red above them in the second photo)
Will the colour ever come back to these, or are they doomed to be eternally dull? If it will come back, is there a way I can help them along?