ID these gorgonians~~some more photos

[calk me Q]

This is not only a thread for inquiry but also will show some of my collections, hope you expierenced guys will help.

The first gorgonian for ID is the one i have kept for a month
The top is taken when i got it , the below is taken yesterday...Seems fare well

Here is another one need ID, it stays for a month but rarely show its polyp..Im wondering what should i do to initiate a feeding response.

The last one needs ID is this that i just got it from my vendor

And a closer view of several of its expanding polyps

Also here is a Dendronepthya needs ID and advice...
It has been in my tank for a month. Polyp extention is well but the overall size has slightly shrinked(seems to be a result of mulnutrition?)
A picture taken when i got it

Taken yesterday

My current tank is a 23Gallon tank with a total volume of 50G. I feed a mixture of

FM clam, MinF, Seafan, FM MinD, UltraPac, Reef pearl, Two little fish Phyto,
with BBS. every two hours throughout the day for a total of 2 teaspoons (in10 seperate feedings by the auto doser). Each feeding time i can see a lot of stuff dosed in the tank and the Cerianthus(tube anemone) will actively lick the tentacles at a higher rate(the reason i describe this is to tell you what density of food is dosed each time)

The tank is water changed 5 times a time at a total volume of 5G perday(really a lot of salt) and the tank was also lanthanum chloride dosed to keep the Phosphate down to 0.02ppm successfully. The nitrate is kept well at 25.

Currently i just dont know whether these corals are getting well fed and more important..is there any way i can judge this? I realize that these corals may show very good appearance even under a slowly starvation process until it reaches and point and never gets back again and die, which is not what i want to see in the future.

Hope you guys can help.
Thanks for all the advice and kind bump!

 

[noy]

It would be much better if you can find out where these corals are from.

The 1st one, if the color is brown without very pronounced "knobs" in the flesh when the polyps are retracted is a Euncinea sp. - could even be the species succinea.

2nd one - won't even hazard a guess without a better picture with color (or description of color) and polyp extension. looks fairly distressed and not sure what you have is representative of actual shape - look up ellisella sp.

3rd one - if its red - its probably a ichiligorgia schrammi (but thats a very uncommon coral), or it could be a form of muricea sp.

HOWEVER, considering where you are (Shanghai) - the 2nd/3rd one could easily be species that we don't see here too much in North America. Most of the gorgs we have are from Caribbean/US and from Indo/Pacific waters but seldom from S. China sea reefs.

Can't really help you with the dendronepthya - i have never been able to keep one alive for more than 8 months. If i were to try again - i would probably focus on phyto and raise rotifers.

 

[calk me Q]

Noy, thanks for your reply and that's a lot of information.

1st: The colour is orange with knobs when retracts. It is openning nearing 24/7 right now but the growth is quite limited that im not aware of with eyes.

2nd: i think you are right i just checked the ellisella sp pics and compared. This is a frag that i found dropped in one of my vendors tank so i got it for free. The whole specimen looked really like bushy long whips. He has two color vabirants :red and pure white. I know this is a rare individual so i want to keep it but currently it doesnt show any rhythmic opening that i dont have any idea of it. It seems to form a film every time it opens partially for 2 days. Dont know the reason.
3. It's reddish purple with the branch tips being yellow.

4. For the Dendronepthya keeping, im quite curious about how some claims of successful keeping come? Some guys claimed they have succesffuly kept for a year but no news afterwards? Is one year mark isnt long enough to proof the elimination of slowly starvation? Any one ever kept them for two years? And epierence?

Yes, we have a lot of gorgonians from S.China (i bet you never seen a pure skyblue seafan in the past which is very commmon here) ,also we have a lot seafan imported from Indo. It is not a concern for waiting too long to get a healthy right specimen but the drawback is that we dont catch up with the tech of keeping NPS as you are in the US especially about food. We dont have Reef Nutrition series(dont know why probably the shelf life or the hygiene stuff) , no frozen rotifers, no frozen cyclopeeze,etc. Fauna Marin is the only one(thank god there is one at least) brand, together with home-cultured BBS and rotifers to take a chance.

 

[calk me Q]

Today another Pic of my collection : it has a bigger size polype so i should assume it it able to feed on bigger sized food (500um?)

 

[Boom]

Today another Pic of my collection : it has a bigger size polype so i should assume it it able to feed on bigger sized food (500um?)

Beautiful. Good luck!

 

[calk me Q]

Beautiful. Good luck!

Thanks...It's been a week and it has recovered a lot (u can see some ripped branches in the previous pic) . I cant say i have been successfully kept it but i will say these guys can grow really quick under ample condition

 

[calk me Q]

some more recent pics
The new imported seafan....which has regrown its ripped tissue back

The white one is quite sensitive upon my feeding frequency and feeding amount everyday. But i yielded the best response at feed them every two hours.

This gorgonian is really stable at opening and closing everyday. Just reaches his 47 days mark.

Same species as the orange one that was given to me by a vendor(who said this gorgonian is doomed and i should have i try) Currently i have no idea though

 

[calk me Q]

43 days mark (5 weeks ) of this dendro!
I still remember one article on AdAq that the author had tried to keep a dendro in a course of two months( 8 weeks) when he noticed a sequence of condition of degradation for all individuals. I just hope this one is not and its getting everything fine.

 

[calk me Q]

Full tank shoot

Another Dendronepthya today (Guese its D. Himprichi?)

 

[calk me Q]

Today's new collection , Need an ID

This is is certainly recovering now.

12/18~

 

[Treed]

Very nice tank. I like how you mounted some of the gorgs to the side of the tank!

 

[calk me Q]

Very nice tank. I like how you mounted some of the gorgs to the side of the tank!

Treed I use a kind of glue that we called it Aron-Alpha, which is kind of super glue that will easily become soild underwater

 

[Ron Reefman]

Today's new collection.

What a nice sea fan! how big is it?

 

[calk me Q]

What a nice sea fan! how big is it?

Hi Ron, it has a diameter of 25cm. Really huge but very small polype.. Think it is difficult. Can anybody ID this?

 

[calk me Q]

OK..12/30 I got update as proposed.

This dendro~~~Or maybe not. It doesn't have sclerite on the polyp for support.

The unknown one under rescue. Seems has grow to some degree and shed also in some area.

The orange variant of the same species as the previous one. Still shiny!

Yellow Menella

2nd purple Menella

The third menella which will be under rescue

 

[calk me Q]

Also. because i got a vendor who knows me of my interest of NPS so he's alluring me today with his latest stock on hand.....
Slobbering...

Today, also contact another hobbist in sounthern china who claimed to have kept his tank for two years. He said that he has make a blue seafan (a vblue variant of blueberry) thrive for two years...And he showed me a full-image of his beautiful tank.

 

[laga77]

Wow!

 

[mark54321]

How did I miss this, your tank looks great. Do you have build thread? Anymore info on feeding regiment, etc.?

 

[calk me Q]

How did I miss this, your tank looks great. Do you have build thread? Anymore info on feeding regiment, etc.?

Hi, i dont have one but i will update on this thread from now on.

My tank is a 45cm(17'') cube with a refugium with total tank volume of app. 140 Litres (37 Gallons)

I currently feed all my coral following the regime :

1. Automatically dosing a mixture of : 1 gram of blended powder food (FM clam, FM seafan, FM MinF, FM MinD, FM MinS, FM ultra bac, Hikari Corallite, Reef Pearls; ) , one cube of frozen Artemia, copepod, rotifer. Dosed every two hours for ten times a day

2. Everyday automatically dose powder food(mixture of Hikari Coralite, seafan and MinF of 0.5 gram(directly into a feed ring) at 9 pm when all the polyps of coral will expand.

3. Every two days directly squirt blended powder food onto the branches of all corals. (0.3 gram of powder will be blended in a 50ml of tank water before squirt feed them using a pipette


Thanks for your attention and compliment and i will continue recording it.
Though what i find difficult is that i currently have all my gorgonians from local South China which you guys may not have expierence of so i have to do every thing myself. But it would be a appreciate to share my ideas and hope you will find something that may do any help to NPS realm.

 

[Devaji108]

great looking tank!
i'll be fallowing along for sure!