Feeding Gorgonia..

[vito is hooked]

Its been two weeks and now all the little white flowers are out, been feeding with coral frenzy with a turkey baster . Everythiong is OK just wondering if anybody does anything different? I feed every other morning with lights out. Thats when ALL the flowers are out. Just wondering.

 

[dendro982]

Picture would help - there are photosynthetic gorgonians and non-photosynthetic. The last should be fed more, than the first. Food size depends on the size of polyps - should be able to fit the mouth. Way of feeding - usually by adding food into the stream. If your gorgonian is in accessible place, target feeding should help too.

I'm just adding food (mix of several foods, available locally) into the water, several times a day, both kinds benefit from this.

 

[vito is hooked]

Have,nt figured out how to to do the picture thig yet, but its the orange with red buds where the white polyps come out, Med high flow, and I built a nice cave for low light. I was shutting down pumps before feeding ,but now that you said into the stream, that more sents, thats how they would feed in th ocean. ILL try this and target feed with pumps off also. THANKS! Is it hard to keep the chilis? one of them might be next, awsome looking!

 

[dendro982]

You may try to ID it at this page (the best I could find so far): link

But from your description, sounds to me like this:

They all are Diodogorgia nodulifera.

There is a good article about them:
R.Toonen

In my experience, they are indifferent to the light (have no MH there, though), as long as no red cyano or detritus build-up - they could be not only in cave.

I'm feeding mine with flow on, just adding the small pinch of food into the water.

You will see, if the food density is good. The coral's look changes from this:
to this:
May be it could be fed less, I'm trying to be on the safe side, until I find details of somebody else's experience.

If the gorgonian is close to the glass and you have a camera with macro-mode, even the simplest, you can see, how the food is processed:

This was dried Cyclop-eeze, the staple food for my diodogorgia.

This is ZoPlan and the 2nd wash of the frozen fish food:

This way you can choose, what is accepted better by the coral.

Flow: reflected from the glass high flow, but not high enough to bend the body of polyps, the feeding in this case may suffer. I had 160 gph pump in 6g tank.

If it will accumulate debris or red cyano on the branches, and basting doesn't help, the gentle rubbing by fingers is possible - I did that several times without after effects.

You can frag it easily - it recover good.

About chili:
I would advise to stick with gorgonians - they have similar polyps with chili:

but less unexpected surprises in care.
I mean medium and large polyped gorgonians, like Diodogorgia above, they could be wide shaped and vertical, with usual short tentacles and with long and curved:

Will continue - limit of images for one post.

 

[dendro982]

You may do a useful for all of us work, photographing changes of the density of the polyps in response for increasing feeding, what food gives better result, what induces may be even growth of branches and thickness of the trunk, maybe even spawning and larvae settlement - vast field of work here.

Even better gorgonian is Swiftia:

This is flaming tangerine orange, S. kofoidi, but could be yellow with red polyps - S. exerta. The only downside is translucent, not transparent polyps.

Or Menella - don't have it, though.

All my chilis prefer the dark (I have dark tank, where they are open in daytime too, in usual tank they open mostly at the night), all closed for a months without feeding, the opened again, more sensitive to water quality (and not only nitrates and phosphates). Their diet should be more complex, than just dried or frozen zooplankton.
But other people have other experiences - you may see them at ultimate reef.net Azoo Corals forum.

If you will keep chili and have it grow - teach us (or, at least, me), what to do. My gorgonians and chilis are alive and well, but no growth or spawning.

Posting images:
There are free image hosts, like photobucket.com, imageshack, webshots.com. Register, upload smaller version of images (600 pix wide max, for fit the screen, IrfanView is a freeware fro this, if you don't have Photoshop). Then copy the string from the window, containing IMG word (or Post of Forums), paste here, at RC, in repy window, click Preview - you see the image.
Photobucket allows full size image appear on forums, and Webshots - thumbnails only. I used both in this post.

Sorry for a long post, but there were many things, worth mentioning.