Zoanthid question

[octovox]

Hi, quick question for you guys and gals.
I have a FOWLR puffer tank with a dogface and a porcupine, which is lacking in color... I've been reading that in many cases if you sneak some zoanthids in with puffers who are well-trained to be hand-fed, they will ignore them. So, I bought a cheap zoanthid colony from Petco to test this out. So far the puffs are leaving them alone.
My concern is that when I bought the rock it was lying flat, and while the light-facing polyps are purple, open, and doing fine, there are some white polyps on the underside that I didn't notice until I got it home.
I put the rock on its side so they are all now getting light.
After a week, some of the white polyps are opening slightly and respond to feeding, but others are still closed. How long should I wait for them to open before coming to the conclusion that they are dead? If they are dead, should I remove them with tweezers or something?
Any advice you could give would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
--Ed

 

[Deanos]

Don't assume they're dead until they fall off the rock. What size tank and what filtration are you using? With adequate filtration, you wouldn't need to remove any dead/dying zoanthids unless their death was being caused by a disease.

By the way, what are you feeding that your zoanthids exhibit a feeding response and what was that response?

 

[octovox]

Very cool, thanks. I have a 75g with a 15g sump/fuge and a generic needle-wheel skimmer rated for 125g that seems to work really well. I'm thinking this tank will become a reef soon when Jake and Pete start getting some size on them and I get the ~200g setup I'm planning.
When I feed the puffers vitamin-soaked seafood (especially shrimp heads) there is a nice bloody soup left behind that I use to feed the polyps with a pipette. They grab the little bits of krill, mysis, etc. and consume them, then look bigger and brighter when they open up again.