Bacteria driven systems and zoas!

[ReeferRob]

Rob, since Patrick said he's getting good growth of the palys, I'm curious as to if you've tried the other proverbial weed, "Pink -n- Golds"?

Hmmm, we will have to see. I just picked up a frag from Kev2Me, maybe Ill lop a polyp or two off and see how they do in the DT.

[ReeferRob]

Hmmm this makes me wonder if my zoas are lacking nutrients due to me depending so much on just my salt mix for it. Also am I keeping my tank TO clean? Should I be dosing anything? I have a variety of corals.
I'm learning that different corals have different needs, ahdah! Apparently just the salt method has been enough for my lps, so far my lil sps and maybe not for zoas. All other softies are doing great.

Jaime your walking a fine line there I think. In your situation params can swing drastically very quickly due to overall water volume. So I would personally error on the side of caution and keep that tank extra clean like you are. But what you could do is possibly try some target feeding say early morning day of a water change. That way you can still keep the tank clean but see if growth is stimulated through target feeding.

See others with larger water volumes can get away with a little excessive feeding from time to time because the water volume and percentages are working in our favor. I can dump some cyclopeez, oyster feast and some Coral Frenzy in my tank and not see a blip on the radar. Where as if you were to do something like that you would probably see a significant nutrient swing that could be detrimental and counter productive to what your trying to achieve.

On that note, and I think I started a thread a long time ago, but I suspect that some morphs are more prone to grow algae and have issues. For example Kedd's Redd's, Bam Bam's, and Radioactive Dragon Eye's always seem to come with a touch or readily grow algae in not so ideal situations.

I also feel that the particular strain of which a z or p came from can have a huge effect or can influence the long term survivability of that polyp.

[Sir Patrick]

I attribute my sucess with palys and bac-driven systems with the amount of food I feed. They are well fed. When I feed- I really dump it in!

I like to see my system as heing high nutrient (food and disolved organics corals can feed on) but not dirty, actually very clean. Very low NO3 & PO4. Seems to work very well for me.