Goniopora

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I purchase a Goniopora coral about a month ago. The fact that people label them as being close to impossible to keep made me wanting it even more:D. Its a huge colony. Probably 4" by 7". This thread is to log its progress. Currently I am feeding it once every 3 days or so. I soak cyclops-eeze in Brightwell Aquatics Phytoplankton for about 5mins then turn off the pumps while feeding it. It really likes the phyto you can easily see the feeding response the moment it comes in contact with it.
 
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That's interesting. Perhaps I should get one.

<table style="width:auto;"><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/uOl6uyXAz91geq45tdK7hA?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_xXnKvgKPgX4/SrZ2xzJu6tI/AAAAAAAAA2o/ThMvIRGEtpo/s400/Photo0018.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:11px; text-align:right">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=deformative0&target=ALBUM&id=5364693949378885633&feat=embedwebsite"></a></td></tr></table>

That would also explain why people keep them successfully in greenhouses.
 
Wow, I've never seen a clownfish in a phyto culture tank before! If that isn't a culture tank, you should start claiming it is. Add some brine shrimp, and you could sell your water as "reef stew".

By greenhouses, do you mean the glass buildings for terrestrial plants? If so, are the goniopora eating pollen?
 
KarlBob said:
Wow, I've never seen a clownfish in a phyto culture tank before! If that isn't a culture tank, you should start claiming it is. Add some brine shrimp, and you could sell your water as "reef stew".

By greenhouses, do you mean the glass buildings for terrestrial plants? If so, are the goniopora eating pollen?
Click to expand...

It was my nano tank that went wrong, full story here, not to hi-jack:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1680646

I mean glass or polycarb buildings where hard core reefers farm coral in vats. Natural sunlight makes phytoplankton grow like anything, so there would be plenty to eat in a greenhouse.
 
No pics?
I've have two Gonis.. blue and pink.. Probably had the pink 8 months. The Green I think are the harder to keep and I think they die because people don't feed them.
 
I have a pink one that i've had for four years. I quit feeding it directly about 2yrs ago. Does fine without the food so far. I'm sure it gets lots of indirect fish waste. It's about 8" across. When i bought it it was about 2".
 
i've had a pink gonio for about a year now. It's about 4 inches wide and when open, its tentacles grow to about 2-3 inches. I've not fed it, nor noticed any feeding response to anything i've put in the tank. But the thing looks great and keeps on growing. I hear they often last this long and then suddenly rtn and die, but so far so good.
 
Eric45 said:
i've had a pink gonio for about a year now. It's about 4 inches wide and when open, its tentacles grow to about 2-3 inches. I've not fed it, nor noticed any feeding response to anything i've put in the tank.
Click to expand...


My red will not respond to anything unless I directly puff it gently onto the polyps.


Try crushing a silverside (esp. the gut area) into a VERY FINE mash, and mix it with a good liquid amino acid complex (I just use Seachem).

Gently puff this onto it... very gently.... and see if the polyps don't bend toward the mixture as if they were thirsty.
 
There has to be a way to keep these corals long term that is simple and repeatable. Im sure that crushing the silversides works and all, but there is no way that in nature they are getting crushed silversides gently blown onto their polyps. We, as a collective group of hobbyists, need to research this as a whole, and I think that we are bound to come up with a couple of observations of goni's in their natural habitat doing something that we can replicate easily. How do they feed in the wild? They cant be getting every polyp blown with finely crushed food every 3-4 days. I just think there has got to be an answer, dont you think?
 
username in use said:
There has to be a way to keep these corals long term that is simple and repeatable. Im sure that crushing the silversides works and all, but there is no way that in nature they are getting crushed silversides gently blown onto their polyps.
Click to expand...

There are a lot of other things we do to our corals that don't happen in nature, such as the use of artificial light, vodka dosing, superglueing them to rocks, etc....

I am not sure that precise replication of their natural environment, to the point of precision in their dietary intake, is likely, practical, or even useful.

In our systems their nutritional needs may be different than in the wild due to metabolism changes (due to lighting differences, population densities, water flow, allelopathy, etc... that happen in our enclosed systems).


We, as a collective group of hobbyists, need to research this as a whole, and I think that we are bound to come up with a couple of observations of goni's in their natural habitat doing something that we can replicate easily. How do they feed in the wild? They cant be getting every polyp blown with finely crushed food every 3-4 days. I just think there has got to be an answer, dont you think?
Click to expand...

An answer? Yes. Reproducing precisely what happens in their natural environment? Not likely.


Personally I stick with what seems to work. Keep in mind I'm also keeping only a red variety, which is known for being more hardy in captivity than the green varieties, also.
 
Sounds fine. I'm not sure about the marine snow. I've never used it, and I suspect there are more nutritious things for us to spend money on. The marine snow things I've looked at seemed to me to be more fad than fact. I may be wrong on that though--


Cyclops, good. Selcon, good. I'd toss in the mix some VERY finely powdered flake food once in a while, it's actually quite nutritious for coral that will take it (and my goni certainly does). A mortar and pestle is good for this. Put in some flake, dribble in some Selcon to give a little liquid to make a paste, and grind it up. Toss in the cyclops and grind it up also. I've found that goni likes stuff quite finely ground.

I do feed mine frozen cyclop-eeze, mashed, and it seems to like it. Not as much as it seems to like pulverized silversides though.
 
Great link, I just read it over (again)--- there were several points he made in there that I remembered, but couldn't recall where I found them. Thanks for bringing it up.

by the way, that guys name is "Justin Credabel". That's just incredible. :jester:


The one by Sprung is really good also.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/dec2002/invert.htm


One by Toonen

http://www.reefs.org/library/article/r_toonen20.html


And an interesting one by Borneman about allelopathy and Goniopora, as well as other coral.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/cw.htm
 
great article, tmz. I'm really concerned about my goni. It's been closed for a week. Turns out the calcium had been out of control high (700+ppm!) due to some dosing problems. The alkalinity is fine (about 3-3.5 meq/L.)

I just made some saltwater for a change today and will do them every other day. I also tried capping it and feeding, but no response. Any ideas, or am I screwed?

thanks!
Angela
 
I'm not much of a goni expert, but tell us more about your setup, what kind of goni you have, lighting, water parameters (esp salinity, nitrates, phosphates, etc).
 
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