Questions about attaching zoanthids

Dionysus

Dionysus

AC Members
May 30, 2007
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Wisconsin
My LFS has been getting in alot of small zoas colony. They aren't attached to anything, the store just lays them in the sand. Ive picked up a couple in the past 2 months, and used loctite super glue to attach them to small pieces of live rock. The glue holds them down, but they don't seem to be growing onto the rock themselves, in fact 1 colony detached from its rock and floated away. They do open up and look very healthy though. Is there something I'm be doing wrong?
I see my zoas don't have a mat like my star polyps, which have attached to my rocks quite well. Do the zoas attach differently?

I just got a colony today, and took a couple pics. Was hoping you might have some suggestions on mounting it. I labeled the pictures top, bottom. Looking at the bottom pic, would it be best to glue the colony to the rock where i highlighted in red?
If you have any other tips or info, I would love to here it. I am fairly new to button polyps.

Nano polyps top copy.jpg Nano polyps bottom copy.jpg
 
Zoas are an odd coral. I picked up a few pieces of the same zoas and placed them in different spots around my tank. Two frags attached and are taking over the rocks they're on while the other two never attached or as far as I can tell propogated. They're all in very similar locations in my tank, but I would say flow and direct vs indirect lighting have something to do with it. My pieces with a little less light seem to do better than those exposed directly to my t-5's. Try placing yiour pieces at different levels and see if that doesn't help you.
 
I bought some off a guy that were freshly fragged and he just super glued them to a piece of rock. he said just to make sure you didnt get the glue around the openings. so far they are doing great and have around 4 new polyps.
 
^^ I agree, I'm getting some after Christmas (When I have the money). I've tried them before, but since I didn't know what it took to have a saltwater tank, I had a huge GHA bloom and it took me 6 months to get rid of it. But that's all better with daily waterchanges!

Just stick them in your crevices! ;)
 
I always super glue gel mine, it just takes time for them to spread over the glue and onto the surface of the rock.
 
I'm with Ace... Super glue (gel) for all my corals.

The trick with zoas seems to be not using too much glue. It also works much better if both the surface you are gluing to and the area contacting the glue on the zoas are dry. Granted, you can't completely dry the zoas, but dabbing them with nice absorbant towel makes a big difference. I apply the glue to whatever I'm gluing them onto, let it sit for a couple minutes, then set the zoas into the glue. After gluing, I let all of the frags sit out of the water for up to 5 minutes to allow the glue to set, which seems to help. It's pretty rare for me to have any of them come unglued.

As for your specific zoas, I'd use a bead of glue along the entire underside of the length of those zoas, centering the zoas on that bead of glue.
 
Take the zoa and allow it to settle into a specimen container with holes for slight surface flow and a very shallow layer of sand. Eventually it'll pick up a few grains, much like shrooms' and then you can glue the sandy base to anything.
 
These are OK ideas assuming you can pull out the rock, but if you cannot get it out of your tank, you can use aquamend. Something like $4 at homedepot and you get a lot of use out of it compared to the super glue. Most of my rocks are larger than my head and already have coral on them, so pulling out to glue zoas is not possible. I just take a small chunk of aquamend and voila, frag is now in place.
 
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