[SPasse]

Steveo,

Cultivation of Gonipora is one of those subjects that I have a schizoid attitude towards.

One on the one hand, Rob Toonen’s statement about the overall survivability of the species in the hobbyist’s system is perfectly correct.

I someone asks me for advise about “purchasing” a gonipora, especially a “Green Gonipora”, I will, as a rule advise against it.

However my “personal” experience with them in my heavily fed, no skimmer, systems with DSB’s and algae filtration has been considerably better than the “average” scenario.

My theory about why my Gonipora’s are surviving is due to the high levels of the lava stages of “sand bed fauna” that my system contains. I am not directly feeding my Gonipora, but rather because I am heavily feeding my sand bed fauna, it is feeding the Gonipora. This is more or less pure conjecture at this point.

There are other corals such as Heliofungia (long tentacle plate) that were at one time considered “nearly impossible” to keep (long term) and turned out to be rather easy to keep once their husbandry needs were understood.

Perhaps the importation of Gonipora might be limited to “licensed” individuals etc. but this opens a whole different can of worms. [img]/ubb/wink.gif[/img]

I do believe that the “secret” to Gonipora husbandry will eventually be found but the overall mortality of our specimens does pose very real ethical concerns in the meantime.

Regards,

Scott

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The definition of an expert is a washed-up drip under pressure.
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