"Purple Ricordia?"

[jpgwold]

My LFS was selling these as Purple Ricordia but they are nothing like the Ricordia I have. Now I know there are different sp. of Ricordia so please give me your opinions.

 

[jrhupp]

jpgwold,

They look to be R. yuma to me. And very bleached ones at that.

Jay

 

[t_wolf323]

I agree, I have several purple Florida Rics and this one doesn't look anything like them.

 

[jpgwold]

What would cause the mushrooms to be bleached? The mushrooms are fairly new to the tank the top picture was taken on the seventh and this one was taken today the fifteenth, I got them on or around the first.

 

[jrhupp]

Improper photo-aclimation somewhere between the sea and your tank. It is fairly common. Directly feed them meaty foods and they should do just fine.

Jay

 

[jpgwold]

What is the preferred method for feeding. It seems that when I use a baster and lightly blow mysis shrimp (which is all I have at the moment) onto the inhabitants in my tank they just shrivel up or let it blow off, never have I seen them take a mysis shrimp in. Wrong food, wrong method, or both?

 

[jrhupp]

I use some 10" forceps (sp) to feed and place the food directly on the polyp, with a little "wiggle" to induce a good feed response. I use copped up bits of shrimp or scallop. But I can't see any reason why mysis wouldn't work.

Jay

 

[jpgwold]

Thank you for your help I'm going to try it now. I do not have any forceps but I can rig something up I'm sure.

 

[jpgwold]

Well attempt one was a failure. Next time I will need better equipment to feed the mushrooms and a better strategy while feeding to keep the shrimp preoccupied with something else. Though even when I wiggled I still did not receive the feeding response that I would have figured. Again thank you for your assistance.

 

[keckles]

I have seen the best feeding response in Ricordea from shrimp pellets. Yes, an unlikely choice, I know. But, they are perfect because they are dense enough to not be easily carried away with the current and slowly break down to encourage an ongoing feeding response.

A pellet will also keep the shrimp busy long enough to allow the Ricordea to finish what it has been offered.

 

[water`bug]

A friend of mine asked me to take these and try to save them. He also was told they are "Purple Yumas."

When I first got them, they were in very bad shape. Bleached and nearly turned inside out.

I placed them in different areas in my 54g, which is lit by 2-65w's, I daylight and 1 actinic.

Two months later... they are both coloring up as you will see in the picture below. In fact, this picture was taken 2 weeks ago... now both Yumas are colored up.

Purple? nope... lol... they look red to me.

I feed a mixture of food to all of my Rics and Yumas... they are all doing extremely well.

Good luck!

donna