I did a pretty significant literature review and proposed some possible theories why dosing ascorbic acid.
I actually blindly, desperately dosed last year when I had a zoa melt down and I became convinced after it completely turned around my tank.
If you search Puffy's thread you will find some of my literature backed theories. I also got in a pissing contest with Eric Borneman on Marine Depot forum, I pointed him to Tristen's work and he got so angry he actually locked the thread under claim that I shouldn't be linking websites to kids, even though the site was the one he created for the science fair.
Here are my theories:
1) ascorbic acid reduces oxidative stress during photosynthesis, buy neutralizing the harmful oxiradicals it increases potential photosynthetic efficiency.
2) ascorbic acid plays a critical role in collagen, since zoa's rely significantly on collagen (that jelly like middle goodness) as structural support, if there is a deficiency or something inhibiting this pathway (possible clause of mysterious zoa melting syndrome?), the dosing gets things back on track.
I have about 5-6 journal articles I dug up, I have them somewhere, they are all posted on Puffy's thread.
Cheers,
Josh