rotarygeek
Member
Ok so the other day a really nice guy from a local forum gave me some zoas. My first corals actually. He gave me an orange one (sorry i don't know the names) with something like 21 or 22 heads, a pink one with like 10 heads, and a kinda ugly brownish green one with long flowing strands coming off the heads, and has like 8 heads. He also gave me some kind of red/brown leather about the size of a quarter. All for free. Now i have a pretty wierd set up lightwise. Its a standard size 55 gallon with a 20" pc light on the left side from current usa. It has a 50/50 daylight/actinic bulb in it that came with it. On the right side, i have a 24" Hagen GLO t5ho single bulb fixture with a 10k (I think thats what it is, im not positive, really whitish yellow) bulb in it. I also have a super actinic bulb as a back up that i can use. I have the ugly brownish zoa under the pc light, and the rest about midway up in the tank under the t5's. I didn't aclimate them at all, just dumped them right in, grabbing them by whatever i could get ahold of. No gloves, touching the actuall coral, you name it, i probably did it wrong. But they all opened up within 2 hours of being in my tank and they all look very good. I guess my real question is, which bulb is the best to get growth out of these things? Should i switch to the super actinic bulb? From what i understand, the light i have now will effect growth, and the actinic will effect color. If anybody could clarify these for me, that would be great. And also, how good of a deal did i get? I know it was good, cuz it was free, but how good?