Help With Coral Placement?

[StealthJett]

Hello all,
I have tried my hands with Zoas as I heard they are an easy-ish coral but my prior attempts have had them melt away on the frag. I read I should be patient when they close initially but they never really get back to opening. It seems like a hard line to walk and I also struggle with understanding flow when it comes to placement. I have a 2ft x 2ft waterbox cube and my aquascape is attached. The return nozzle has a random flow generator attached with a sicce 1.0 running on the lower side of its full potential. I have an old-ish prime 16HD running on low power due to the absence of coral. I have a preset I could run based upon BRS AB+ Really here I am looking for general coral advice and placement advice for my specific aquascape.

 

[The_Paradox]

If they are melting in less than a week or so I would look at water parameters before glow and lighting. That being said from the one photo that tank looks pretty dark. Also that sand bed is deep enough I would make sure you have a decent amount of sand sifters or take care not to disturb it.

 

[CrimsonTide]

Zoas do best with less light but some can take a lot of light. It really just depends. I have a couple on a frag rack right now and 3/4 are open and the other types are closed due to the higher light.

I would put them on thay front rock on the right or the rock on the bottom left. I'm not exactly sure where the water comes out on your tank to create flow but the bottom left might be good. I have the same light as you and essentially have all my zoas as low as possible. But they can be trained to go up higher and enjoy light just most zoas don't need a lot of light.

The other train of thought is to put them wherever they want to stay open the most during the day but that is a lot of trial and error.

 

[StealthJett]

Thanks for the replies everyone. It has been too long for me to remember water params when I had the Zoas. I will test water params and post the results here.