Clove Polyps, what’s the deal?

[boboshempy]

I just bought a small frag of clove polyps and I they have been in my tank since Saturday morning. It seems as though these bad boys don’t want to come out. All my zoos open up right away when I put them in the tank like they can’t wait to open. When the lights are off the cloves come out a little though. I have a single 150W MH. Is it the lights, or do they just need to give them time, or what’s the deal?

 

[oddballs]

just give them a little time i own a lfs and when i get these guys in it seems to take a couple of 4 to 7 days for about 50% of the frags or colonies i get to really open up and start lookin good?maybe they are slow acclimaters.

 

[smy168]

where are you placing them? I found that they do better starting low and slowly moving upward so they can acclimate to the light.

 

[boboshempy]

I have them on the ground. I haven't put them up on the rock yet so they are as far away from the light as they can be in my tank without being in the shade.

 

[surfnvb7]

cloves are a PITA IMO. my green ones are so tempermental, and grow very slow. no idea what the ideal living conditions are.

try posting this in the new softy forum, there may be some clove collectors in there

 

[Me No Nemo]

I've got several colonies of the neon green in my store right now and they are all doing very well and opened the first day they came in. They are in shallow tanks under 175 10K Ushios and enjoy good flow, not bending them over, but decent flow. Mine are reproducing like crazy. I feed the tanks DT's Oyster Eggs, Cyclopeez, Coral Vibrance and PhytoPlan or Phyco Pure, and decapsulated brine shrimp eggs. I also have a very productive refugium that I supplement once a month with a bottle of Ocean Pods. Not sure which combo is working, but these and all the other softies are fat, happy and reproduce like crazy. Hope this helps. Marcye
Calcium: 450
Alk: 11
Mag: 1450

HTH

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Al,

I have green and also gold cloves. They've done fine pretty much anywhere in the tank, from the sandbed all the way to the top. They grow fast enough that the gold ones are the new GSP of my tank

I've given these to other people who have had them melt away. In a lot of the cases, their tanks tended to have lower pH and/or alk than mine.

What works for me:

alk 3.45 meq
Ca 430ppm
Mg 1350 ppm
pH 8.3-8.4

temp 76 (they've done fine at 82 also)
lights 2x250w XM 20k (previously Hamilton 14k)

hth.

 

[MinibowMatt]

were they shipped to you? Cloves are notoriously bad shippers. IME they are very finicky like GSP and xenia. If you have the right tank conditions they grow like weeds-- if you dont, well you know what happens then... Good luck!

 

[surfnvb7]

dont get me wrong, my cloves are awesome, and look great. they just grow at a snails pace.

IME, there are at least 2 different kinds of cloves out there, and i'm not talking about color. the kind of clove that seems to be coming into the market now, has relatively small polyps (around 1/2 inch), coming in on very large colonies for very cheap prices. everyone i know who has this kind, they grow pretty quickly.

the kind i have, has HUGE polyps, some close to 1.5inches, and look more "feathery" looking. everyone i know that has this kind, they grow soooooo slow.

its hard to describe the difference i'm talking about, so you'll just have to take my word for it

also, with mine, and the frags ive given to people, they never seem to put out runners horizontally along the rock (like a zoa would spread out horizontally over a flat rock), they always send runners going up vertically along a rock face near the colony.

also, the only times they put out new runners and polyps, is when i make a drastic change to the tank. i.e. they put out 5 new polyps when i added carbon one time, but then stopped a couple weeks later. they put out a bunch of runners and polyps when i added a different skimmer, and when i changed the lighting, AND when i moved them to another tank.

so for me, they seem to only respond to big changes to the tank, but them abruptly stop growing a couple weeks afterwards.

 

[boboshempy]

Wow, thanks for everyone’s help. Yesterday when I got home from work each and every polyp was in full blume. I guess they just needed some time to acclimate to my tank. surfnvb7, those are gorgeous cloves, mine are also nice but they don’t have as much green spreading throughout the feathers. I have a small frag so I hope they grow at a decent pace.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7503440#post7503440 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by surfnvb7
its hard to describe the difference i'm talking about, so you'll just have to take my word for it

Yah, I have the big green ones, and the smaller gold ones. The greens ones don't grow as fast as the gold ones for me either.

Here's something from our club's pay it forward project.

http://www.bareefers.org/BAR/viewtopic.php?t=1043