New branching dendrophyllia help and advice please

[Gaviscon]

Hi,

I succumbed to buying a branching dendrophyllia from my LFS. This is not really the type I wanted initially as I'd have preferred Dendrophyllia coccinea. However, they looked really nice and I remembered that Aquabacs had a really cool one in his NPS reef.

Unfortunately the polyps do not open in daylight ATM and as a new purchase, it probably hasn't been fed since it was collected.

I'm trying brine shrimps with new era liposome spray ATM. The polyps puff up a bit but no tentacles

I'm trying placing it in a dark place ATM within a jug of brine shrimps. Anything else I can try to get this coral to feed. It's proving to be trickier than sun corals!

Aquabacs, Dendro, Uhuru, Colt, I know you guys have loads of experience between you. Can you (or anyone else) help an aspiring Master of the Darkside?

If only they were like rhizotrochus!

 

[MagikMike]

Moderate to high flow and do the opposite for lighting (moderate to null). I have had great success with this! I even murdered 5 heads of my dendro's during a fragging process, but lucky me ON THE DEAD DENDRO'S I HAVE AROUND 2 DOZEN, THATS RIGHT AROUND 24, NEW/BABY DENDRO'S GROWING!! I read on the internet how you have to feed your dendro's several times a week, but i rarely feed them.. The only time mine are fed is if they catch some floating mysis when I feed my fish!! Good luck, hope this helped some..

 

[Aquabacs]

They are on the more difficult scale I would personally work more with frozen Argent Cyclop-eeze if you want to get them to open. Depending on what you have available to you locally, Jehmco might me an option for you if you want to by Cyclop-eeze in bulk. You can pick up a brick at a really good price and no non-photosynthetic reefer should be with out it.


Until all the polyps open completely you might have to go with the option of bucket feeding it daily. I know, it can be a real PITA, but it is worth it. Another option and this is only to get the polyps to open would to individually feed each polyp by hand a single Fauna Marin LPS+ medium pellet. Put the colony in a location you could have easy access to, shut the flow down, feed them by hand & once they take the food in turn the pumps back on. The LPS+ pellets are then only used occasionally after that. Once the polyps are opening (not just swelling) move on to Hikari Mysis. It is small and the polyps can easily take it in. If you then want to move onto the occasional PE Mysis feeding, which is much larger mysis (not to mention they are also freshwater mysis) you can do so.



Mike

 

[Gaviscon]

Cheers Mike!

I've tried cyclopeeze with no response but today's effort (which is underway as I type) has been more successful. I've been placing the FM pellets on each head and the polyps are very slowly eating them. I only have the large pellets which don't seem to be a problem especially if soaked first. I appreciate the large pellets might not be ideal for various reasons but I figure it's better than nothing.

I've ordered some DD reef paste as this seems good at inducing a feeding response in corals and if I can get the polyps a bit more open I'll retry cyclopeeze and small mysis etc as you suggest.

Just another question if I may? I've looked on the CITES site to see if Dendrophyllia coccinea can be imported to the UK. I've had no luck. Just wondered if you knew.

Cheers dude!