Zoanthids and what they are named

[mdpitts]

The thing that drives me crazy in the reef game is the naming of a coral. I get hung up on names. This post is for you folks who also get hung up on names. I know it's never gonna happen but if I got 3 wishes one of them would be all corals and the pictures of corals for sale would be standardized. I'm sure some of you want to hurl at that.

Zoas are the reason I wanted to get a saltwater tank and I want them all!! But I also want to be armed with knowledge while I shop.If any of you want to pipe in with know zoa name variants I would love to know. For example (and I'm not sure my examples are correct or not so please correct me if you know):

Pandoras = Gold and Pinks (and maybe more)
JF Stargazers = Daisy Cutters

You get bonus points if you include pictures. Maybe this could turn into a database. Maybe there is one. The ones I've found are many years old.

 

[encrustingacro]

Trade names are just there to bump up the price. The names will probably never be standardized, since it would be near-impossible to keep track of and name every new color variant that makes its way into the hobby. I generally just ID based on species, since species names say a lot more about care requirements.

Hornets, Radioactive Dragon Eyes, Daisy Cutters = Zoanthus sansibaricus

Sunny Ds, Armor of Gods = Z. vietnamensis

White Zombies, Hawaiian Ding Dangs, Magicians = Z. gigantus

Z. kuroshio is a little hard to differentiate from Z. vietnamensis; the main difference is that it occurs in the South/Central-Pacific while vietnamensis occurs in the Indo-West Pacific.

 

[littlebigreef]

With all due respect to @encrustingacro the trade names are there to help differentiate between strains AND bump up the price .

But seriously, there's a few resources out there like zoabrary.com (site looks to be down) and facebook groups that can help. I keep a running catalogue of strains on my Instagram account (I'm littlebigreef there too) with hash tags of the name so you can seen not only the zoa, but how it may present over time.

@encrustingacro is also right in that a trade name isn't going to offer you any real useful insight on care requirements vs the scientific name. Its an often overlooked fact that care and tolerance for water, light, and nutrition vary greatly between different species.

As for the bigger picture people can be as pedantic as they want to be regarding names. However, I look at it as there being two groups; bucket strains and named strains. Bucket strain zoas are ones like fire and ice, radioactive dragon eyes, blow pops, and laser lemons. There's so many of these that present basically the same it can all be called the same thing. These often come in on 'assorted zoa rocks.'

The other group would be named stuff that has certain immutable distinguishing characteristics. A 'rasta' for example, is unique strain that doesn't look like anything nor does anything else look exactly like it. This is where the name game heats up. As this stuff comes in vendors cherry pick and name stuff with potential and there's no impetus for them to collaborate on naming as they're all trying to get top dollar for their 'new release.' This is how you end up with 'sticker shocks,' (bsa) 'flaming brohicans' (cc) and 'reverse hallucinations' (forget the attribute).

My advice would be to 'google image' any names on stuff on you're considering from vendors and take a look around and see. Ultimately, there isn't, and will never be, any authority control on naming conventions so you gotta do your homework first - especially before buying from an online vendor.

 

[encrustingacro]

With all due respect to @encrustingacro the trade names are there to help differentiate between strains AND bump up the price .

But seriously, there's a few resources out there like zoabrary.com (site looks to be down) and facebook groups that can help. I keep a running catalogue of strains on my Instagram account (I'm littlebigreef there too) with hash tags of the name so you can seen not only the zoa, but how it may present over time.

@encrustingacro is also right in that a trade name isn't going to offer you any real useful insight on care requirements vs the scientific name. Its an often overlooked fact that care and tolerance for water, light, and nutrition vary greatly between different species.

As for the bigger picture people can be as pedantic as they want to be regarding names. However, I look at it as there being two groups; bucket strains and named strains. Bucket strain zoas are ones like fire and ice, radioactive dragon eyes, blow pops, and laser lemons. There's so many of these that present basically the same it can all be called the same thing. These often come in on 'assorted zoa rocks.'

The other group would be named stuff that has certain immutable distinguishing characteristics. A 'rasta' for example, is unique strain that doesn't look like anything nor does anything else look exactly like it. This is where the name game heats up. As this stuff comes in vendors cherry pick and name stuff with potential and there's no impetus for them to collaborate on naming as they're all trying to get top dollar for their 'new release.' This is how you end up with 'sticker shocks,' (bsa) 'flaming brohicans' (cc) and 'reverse hallucinations' (forget the attribute).

My advice would be to 'google image' any names on stuff on you're considering from vendors and take a look around and see. Ultimately, there isn't, and will never be, any authority control on naming conventions so you gotta do your homework first - especially before buying from an online vendor.

I would get trade names being able to differentiate between strains if we only had a couple of well-known names. However, there are hundreds of trade names, many of them overlapping the same morph.

 

[BuckChoklit]

JF Stargazers = Daisy Cutters

A few months ago I went to a lfs and asked if they had any Daisy cutters. After me describing them he told me that he had one left but they are called stargazers. Its difficult to keep up with all these names

 

[ackshee]

I'm new to the reef-keeping hobby, but I've been getting very frustrated at the lack of scientific names for everything. Nobody knows the species names of seemingly half the corals and macroalgae.

 

[littlebigreef]

I would get trade names being able to differentiate between strains if we only had a couple of well-known names. However, there are hundreds of trade names, many of them overlapping the same morph.

For sure, that's why I refer to stuff as 'bucket strains,' we just really don't need a bunch of auxiliary names for the same basic thing. Really, its a question of 'how widely recognized is the name?' That, of course, is contingent on the vendor, how long the strain has been around, etc. But, there's a lot of trade name simplification that can happen right there.

There is a lot of nonsense that occurs with rebranding, duplicitous naming, and riffing on existing names - no doubt.

When you cut through all that noise though its been my experience that there key distinguishing characteristics for many of the named strains out there. Just as you can tell a sansibaricus from a vietnamensis based on morphological features I'd argue you (me or anyone) can do the same for the lion's share of named strains using colors and patterns as well.

Then again, I'm so deep in the zoa rabbit hole I have my morning coffee in China.

 

[littlebigreef]

A few months ago I went to a lfs and asked if they had any Daisy cutters. After me describing them he told me that he had one left but they are called stargazers. Its difficult to keep up with all these names

And there you go proving @encrustingacro's point with an excellent example.

That strain has been in the hobby 20 some plus years and both those names are widely recognized and inherently interchangeable. I don't know who called it which name first but I do know Jason Fox branded one of the names in the very early days of coral branding. You do a google search now and you'll get results with both names being attributed to him. How about that lol?

@ackshee I'll do you one better... most people don't know the difference between zoas and palys and freely use the term 'paly' to refer to Z. gigantus. Of course, our friend @encrustingacro has been doing god's work correcting folks on that for some time (for which I thank them).

 

[stewy14]

I'm new to the reef-keeping hobby, but I've been getting very frustrated at the lack of scientific names for everything. Nobody knows the species names of seemingly half the corals and macroalgae.

can I get a Walt Disney acro? XD what type of name is that?

 

[ZzyzxRiver]

I don’t know anything about anything, but three months in the reefing game and I’ve deduced that the same people who name strains of weed are the ones who name coral. Prove me wrong.

 

[mdpitts]

Trade names are just there to bump up the price. The names will probably never be standardized, since it would be near-impossible to keep track of and name every new color variant that makes its way into the hobby. I generally just ID based on species, since species names say a lot more about care requirements.

Hornets, Radioactive Dragon Eyes, Daisy Cutters = Zoanthus sansibaricus

Sunny Ds, Armor of Gods = Z. vietnamensis

White Zombies, Hawaiian Ding Dangs, Magicians = Z. gigantus

Z. kuroshio is a little hard to differentiate from Z. vietnamensis; the main difference is that it occurs in the South/Central-Pacific while vietnamensis occurs in the Indo-West Pacific.

With all due respect to @encrustingacro the trade names are there to help differentiate between strains AND bump up the price .

But seriously, there's a few resources out there like zoabrary.com (site looks to be down) and facebook groups that can help. I keep a running catalogue of strains on my Instagram account (I'm littlebigreef there too) with hash tags of the name so you can seen not only the zoa, but how it may present over time.

@encrustingacro is also right in that a trade name isn't going to offer you any real useful insight on care requirements vs the scientific name. Its an often overlooked fact that care and tolerance for water, light, and nutrition vary greatly between different species.

As for the bigger picture people can be as pedantic as they want to be regarding names. However, I look at it as there being two groups; bucket strains and named strains. Bucket strain zoas are ones like fire and ice, radioactive dragon eyes, blow pops, and laser lemons. There's so many of these that present basically the same it can all be called the same thing. These often come in on 'assorted zoa rocks.'

The other group would be named stuff that has certain immutable distinguishing characteristics. A 'rasta' for example, is unique strain that doesn't look like anything nor does anything else look exactly like it. This is where the name game heats up. As this stuff comes in vendors cherry pick and name stuff with potential and there's no impetus for them to collaborate on naming as they're all trying to get top dollar for their 'new release.' This is how you end up with 'sticker shocks,' (bsa) 'flaming brohicans' (cc) and 'reverse hallucinations' (forget the attribute).

My advice would be to 'google image' any names on stuff on you're considering from vendors and take a look around and see. Ultimately, there isn't, and will never be, any authority control on naming conventions so you gotta do your homework first - especially before buying from an online vendor.

I still think it is crazy and wouldn't it be a "truth in advertising" type thing and I would also think it would benefit everybody if they could all agree on something. I mean, it sounds like many people are on to the tricks. This is all interesting info. I do google just about everything. I LOVE learning about corals.

 

[mdpitts]

And there you go proving @encrustingacro's point with an excellent example.

That strain has been in the hobby 20 some plus years and both those names are widely recognized and inherently interchangeable. I don't know who called it which name first but I do know Jason Fox branded one of the names in the very early days of coral branding. You do a google search now and you'll get results with both names being attributed to him. How about that lol?

@ackshee I'll do you one better... most people don't know the difference between zoas and palys and freely use the term 'paly' to refer to Z. gigantus. Of course, our friend @encrustingacro has been doing god's work correcting folks on that for some time (for which I thank them).

Interesting, I read something that said many people identify a palythoa by the mouth - if it is long like a slit and not a sweet little round pucker (I added the pucker bit to be silly) it is a paly. I think that is not correct though. I also read that it is super hard to identify between them unless you do a dna test. I hope I'm remembering that correctly.

 

[mdpitts]

I'm new to the reef-keeping hobby, but I've been getting very frustrated at the lack of scientific names for everything. Nobody knows the species names of seemingly half the corals and macroalgae.

exactly! the same for me. i just want to know what i'm getting and not buy it twice.

 

[mdpitts]

I guess what I was also hoping to see here was what are some of the known names of zoas or paly's that have multiple names for the same thing. @encrustingacro added a few.

Also, I so, so SO appreciate all of you who have been doing this for so long and still have the patience to answer questions that you may have answered time and again over the years. I'm so thankful this is a robust site with so much knowledge. Group hug y'all!

What other dupe names do we know of??

 

[Steven Garland]

What doesn't help is from system to system there may be 1 thing different causing a z/p to maybe produce an extra color,or slighty morph or whatever and that shop takes advantage of this and creates a new name.

Now a Shop A that had a regular Candy Apple Red's got it to color up and produce a pink color with different leds and amino's over Shop B and now you have a new zoa born !!! Welcome to the very confusing overly expensive world of Zoa's keeping !!

Also what doesn't help is there is no STANDARD in reef keeping. Nobody uses the same equipment from shop to shop east to west coast north to south border. Every shop will for the most part have different end results with some coral.