Big Rescue Attempt!

[gemini aquarius(t)]

Picked these up from a friend who had forgotten about them. I have always had a soft spot for NPS, and even more so for rescue corals... so there was no way I was leaving without them.
I will keep this updated, but I just got them on Friday.. today is Monday (for the future users, and I, who won't remember how long it has been)


Step one was finding room for them in my nanos. But I decided to keep them together for now in my 7.5 gallon.







FTS


Wish me luck!

 

[hypostatic]

OUCH those things are starved. That orange gorgonian is NPS also. Any updates?

 

[gemini aquarius(t)]

They are still alive, but I haven't seen much improvement. The both have been trying to open a little now, but they have lost a lot of tissue while I was trying to coax them open, so now its going to be a even steeper uphill battle, unfortunately.

Yeah, the swiftia gorg isn't doing so well, Im having a ridiculous algae outbreak, and its overgrowing the gorg.

 

[hypostatic]

Are you feeding at night or during the day?

A few suggestions:

GFO. Get that algae under control. You need a way to reliably get those nutrients out of the system, and GFO is a good way to go.

What are you feeding the dendros and swiftia?

To help your dendros recover I would recommend getting a fine food that sinks easily, turning the pumps off for at least ten minutes, putting the food on top of the polyps, and waiting for the food to be eaten to turn the pumps back on. I've used fish flakes that have been powdered and goniopower for this successfully

 

[blutang007]

Will be following this.

 

[gemini aquarius(t)]

Yeah, the gfo is something I have running but hasn't seemed to help much. There are two elegance, and a platygyra that I'm also trying to recover in the same tank so there is an immense amount of food input into the tank daily. Not to mention the 3 fish and shrimp and starfish that all share the 7 gallons of water (less really with water displacement).

 

[vmvm60]

I found that the black ones are much more sensitive to regular feeding.

Keeping such a small volume of water in stable balance, while feeding so heavily, is a real challenge!
What is your water change schedule?

Fingers crossed!

 

[hypostatic]

how are you running the GFO? The fact that you're having algae problems is a sign that you're having elevated nitrates and/or phosphates

 

[gemini aquarius(t)]

Yeah, they aren't doing great. I'm doing a recovery of a dendro colony in my 9g that is going much better. These ones were just going to be tough from the beginning. I do 2-3 gallons once a week.

 

[gemini aquarius(t)]

Gfo in a bag in my Aquaclear with an intank media basket

 

[hypostatic]

Ah, that's the problem. GFO only really works in a reactor or a canister filter. In the aquaclear water just flows around the bag. For the PO4 to be absorbed the water needs to be actively pushed through the media

 

[gemini aquarius(t)]

Yeah, I know its not ideal, but I don't have anywhere to run a reactor, nor do I really want to run one. I like the look of everything being compact.

 

[gemini aquarius(t)]

I am probably going to bring them to a LFS where I know they will do their best to feed. More often than I can at least.

 

[gemini aquarius(t)]

Took the black sun back to the store. Couldn't get him to start feeding. The orange guy is down to a couple polyps. Only the three that opened, but they don't look good.

The other rescues look pretty good.