What's wrong with my flowerpot?

S

SandersIsbell

New member
Good afternoon ladies and gents.
My wife and I woke up to notice something disturbing with our Flowerpot this morning. I've posted a picture as well as 2 pics of our tank for reference. It looked fine yesterday as I was doing a water change. He hasn't been extending out as far for the past 2 or 3 days, but otherwise, has seemed fine. What could cause this!?
 

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Post your parameters and any other tank info, it's usually a good place to to start and have an idea of what your dealing with.
Alk, cal, dosing carbon etc etc.
 
Looks like this Goni already had some underlying issues. Did you buy with all those polyps already dead? I have over a dozen gonis, and they love good light and high flow.
 
These are normally hard to keep corals. I have 3 of them and they are doing great, but they tend to prefer med to high nutrient tanks and they love to be target fed. I've shared this with others before and it seems to help.

Also, your parameters would help the team find a potential issue.
  1. They do like lots of flow
  2. They don't like too much light (Corners of the tank are best for them)
  3. They prefer a slightly dirty tank (In super clean tank, they last about a year)
  4. Longer than normal drip acclimation is critical for these corals
  5. Feeding them twice a week makes them very happy
  6. Dosing magnesium has made a good difference for me

Good Giniopora care advice link
 
I'd have to agree with webmanny. Except I moved mine from a mainly lps and Zoa tank, to my mainly sps high flow ultra low nutrient tank now they're extremely happy lots of polyp extension and growth 3+ years. They're odd corals..
 
Thank you all for your help.
My parameters are as follows.
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
Calcium 500
Hardness 10dkh
pH 8.0
Salinity 1.026

We got the coral in March or April. We've had some green and red algae growth, but it's going away over the past couple of weeks. He was fully covered in polyps with great extensions. Originally, it didn't come out very far but we started dosing extra calcium and he really came out of his shell. We stopped calcium about a month ago, but he's still seemed great up until Sunday morning. He's in the center of the tank, but he's right on the ground and there's only moderate lighting. The variables that I can think of are below.
New Clarkii clown and condy acquired a bit over a week ago.
A new zoanthid acquired on the same trip as the clown.
5 gallon water change the night before we noticed problems with him. (I usually do 10 gallon changes weekly but it was late and I was tired.)

Thank you for any more insight.
 
Webmanny, can you explain more about a "slightly dirty" tank. I wish I could say I keep a pristine tank, and while I try, I'm sure there are faults. I've had some accumulation in the substrate which has mostly gone away. I've also got the algae that I've mentioned, which is going away. But I know I must have had more nitrate than my bioload could handle, otherwise, the algae wouldn't have bloomed, so while I would love to say "All of my parameters are 0, I'm awesome", Unfortunately, I'm realistic and I know my tank may be slightly dirty, otherwise, the algae bloom wouldn't exist.

Finally, for full clarification. This tank has only been set up since January. This is my first tank since 2006. All of my previous experience has been with FOWLR tanks and planted FW tanks.


Webmanny said:
These are normally hard to keep corals. I have 3 of them and they are doing great, but they tend to prefer med to high nutrient tanks and they love to be target fed. I've shared this with others before and it seems to help.

Also, your parameters would help the team find a potential issue.
  1. They do like lots of flow
  2. They don't like too much light (Corners of the tank are best for them)
  3. They prefer a slightly dirty tank (In super clean tank, they last about a year)
  4. Longer than normal drip acclimation is critical for these corals
  5. Feeding them twice a week makes them very happy
  6. Dosing magnesium has made a good difference for me

Good Giniopora care advice link
Click to expand...
 
hmmm. Alkalinity feels like it's a bit on the high side. I would do a few more water changes and target feed it something small every few days. Also, you may want to bring the Calcium down a bit, which the water changes will do for you, but I would stop dosing for now.

Your tank doesn't seem like it is heavily stocked and should not need dosing if you are using a good salt.
 
SandersIsbell said:
Thanks for the suggestions.
Webmanny, can you tell me more about this DIY auto dimming LED setup you have?
Click to expand...

Sure. I have built about 5 LED systems since I started with my Pico tank a few years back, but I think this is by far the best one I've had and the simplest one to own and operate.

Please note that I love building electronics and I am also motivated by the savings you get when building your own light vs buying one of the new Kessils or Radions or whatever lights are in the market today.

For this build, I bought a heatsink from Rapid LEDs, a fan, a bunch of LEDs, some wire, power supply and a controller. In total, I spent close to $150.00 and I have a fully customizable auto sunrise and sunset light that has been running great for about 18 months now without a single problem.

Since this light is overkill for my tank, I run them at about 60% intensity, which means less heat and longer life on the LEDs.

Here are some pictures:
The light (Don't mind the HOB skimmer, this is an old picture and I have since installed a sump and all new stuff under the tank.)
%25255BUNSET%25255D.jpg


The controller and power supply:
upload_-1.jpg


This is a video of the sunrise and sunset effect sped up X256:
http://webmanny.com/post/107358581048/a-quick-video-of-the-automated-dimming-feature-on

I'll be the first to admit that this is an addiction, because this is the next one I'm already building. This one will be a hybrid with T5 bulbs and LED pucks. I don't know when this one will be done, but I'll open a build thread to share with everyone soon.
upload_-1.jpg
 
Slightly dirty means the presence of nitrates and organics. My goni is doing great at about 10ppm nitrate, target feeding Cyclops or rotifers once or twice a week, and leaving my skimmer and sump return off for about 30 minutes after each feeding daily, so it has time to absorb some of the organics out of the water.

I did have a problem with my goni when I did a water change without adjusting the Alk of the new water, causing a sudden Alk drop.

I imagine if you're Alk is at 10dkH now, the new water you're adding during a water change isn't close to that, and you're generating Alk swings. Nothing in my tank liked that, and I lost several coral to that issue alone. So for my 29g tank, I change about 4.5g per week, and add 4cc's of Randy's 2-Part Recipe 1 to get the Alk of the replacement water around 9dkH, where I keep my tank.

Also, for the goni, I dose 4 drops of Kent's Iron and Manganese daily. It's strictly anecdotal evidence, but I would say the goni has perked up a bunch since I started. And my chaeto as well.
 
Long length in captivity is rare yes. I have one that I got about three years ago. Fingers crossed lol
 
I've had mine for about a year and a half now and it has had a few scary moments, but it has always come back. I hope I'm able to keep it for a long time. This is one of my favorite corals.
 
green goniapora are wild most of the time and they never last more than 6-8 months. if you can find them aquacultured they have a much higher success rate. the red gonis are mostly aquacultured and they thrive in aquariums. I've had mine for a long time now and it's doing great
 
That is completely wrong and being your from LI I would expect you've heard of ReefGen! I have all of their gonis and they are suuuuper hardy. Some years old, and one about three years old that has Justin's name engraved in the bottom which he did before the fancy RG plugs.
 
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