goniopora receding

[Fayor43]

My guess is that the receding has gotten far to worse to hope for a reverse? It has slowly been receding and i have tried my hardest to get it back to good health with no luck. The receding started about a month back and had progrssively gotten worse. I understand that unfortunately this is fairly common with the goniopora. Also found a worm that has been cohabitating in the coral but my understanding is that the worm shouldn't have any ill effect on the goniopora. I feed him reef roids regularly and all parameters are in check... other coral are doing great.

At night so he is retracted..

 

[Tweaked]

Sorry to see this. My experience has been eventual death with the specimens direct from sea like this one. Try good flow and keep your fingers crossed.

 

[Ricks_Reef]

Looks to me like there is a worm of some kind on that thing. Might be bothering it. I have had the best luck with them in non direct light medium flow usually in a corner or back middle of tank. I have also had decent luck with them feeding morning doses of Red Sea Reef Energy A&B, Actipods and Cyclopeeze flakes for the fish. I dont turn off my wave makers when I feed so some of the food is being continually chopped into tiny particles which is distributed across the tank as a whole. I don't turkey baster blast my corals with food. What looks like a feed response is generally them just receding due to being irritated by the water jet.

The other thing I do which is a hot button of debate but given me great success with some hard to keep specimens is I don't skim. Instead I run a phosphate reactor with Chemi-pure. I have a home made sump with a refugium for my plankton and is where on occasion I dose my phytoplankton and a chamber filled with the porcelain bio tube thingies and live rock rubble.

Fish poop and protein and vitamin matter feeds your coral. Phosphates feed your plants like macro algae and micro algae but better to get it out as much as possible as there is usually waaaay too much in a tank environment. You need a little algae to feed the micro plankton in your tank but like I just said providing them food is not something you usually have to worry about.

Something else you might want to do is dip the coral in Sea Chem Reef Dip and even paint some of the dip on it's base as it is starting to receed there.

Anyways that is my 2 cents take or leave it.

Hope this helps.

 

[OrionN]

There is not a lot that you can do. Keep the tank in good condition and hope for the best, but when it is receding like this there is not much hope.This species, Goniopora stokesi, is hard to keep in our tank because they required a lot of the right food, and your tank does not have it IMO.
I would not recommend handling the coral. Remove and dipping will just make mater worst and "painting" stuff on the exposed skeleton will hasten it's demise mainly due to injury from handling and more stress to the coral.
The root cause of your problem is lack of nutrition, then eventual succumb to infection and disease. You did as I suggested in the other thread which is moving it off of the sand bed to keep the sand from smother and killing the corals at the edge is all you can do. This is not much, and you coral will not make it.

 

[OrionN]

Goniopora are not beginner coral If you really want to try another species of Goniopora I suggested that you need a well mature tank with deep sand bed, and to get a smaller polyp, red Goniopora. They are hardier than Goniopora stokesi, which is the most common but most difficult Goniopora to keep.

 

[Tweaked]

I would also look into killing that worm!

 

[OrionN]

That worm is a scavenger noting more. It is doing it's job in the tank.

 

[Brorod]

Goniopora are not beginner coral If you really want to try another species of Goniopora I suggested that you need a well mature tank with deep sand bed, and to get a smaller polyp, red Goniopora. They are hardier than Goniopora stokesi, which is the most common but most difficult Goniopora to keep.

This is what I would agree with. Dipping is going to make its demise much quicker. I have had great success with the red goni's. Stokes are more appealing because of their polyp size and how they flow once inflated however they're very hard to keep without what your having be the end result. Clowns hosting a few of mine have killed them off quicker however I have managed to keep one for almost a year until my carpet new decided to go for a walk.

 

[Happyreefing11]

euclid worm that's what is on the flower pot I just pulled one off last week and my coral is back to happy happy