[Reinhold]

Well, I guess the common wisdom is correct. For a long time, I thought I could avoid what appears to be inevitable, and keep a Flower Pot coral alive. It lived for about 1 year, but over the past two months, the polyps became shorter and fewer in number.

My coral normally would go through periods of retraction and then full extension, but it finally retracted for good.

I remember the days when I was happy to keep anything alive for a year, but no more.

[schrocat]

Reinhold,

Agreed.
The bar has been raised huh...

My first coral, a flowerpot...the LFS called it an "easy keeper".

[alf3482]

sorry to hear about you loss

[Ninong]

Sorry to hear that but you're right, the conventional wisdom seems to be that they expire sometime between 9 and 18 months even when they appeared healthy up until that point. Rob Toonen has written extensively on this topic and is convinced that most home aquaria just don't provide the proper nourishment to keep them alive long-term. It probably takes a lot of phytoplankton and a lot of very fine particulate detritus on a constant basis to maintain their health. They are found naturally in murky lagoonal areas.

Scott Passe has kept them longer but he's running without a skimmer, which I think is a benefit in keeping Goniopora. I wonder how Perry's dad's Goniopora is doing? The LFS sold Perry's dad one a little over a year ago telling him it was an easy beginner's coral. I think I'll shoot an e-mail to Perry and to Scott P. to see if they have anything to add.

Ninong

[alf3482]

Ninong,
I am not to sure about the skimming part. I have three beautiful goniopora's in a tank that is skimmed 24/7 they are between 2 years old and 1.5 years old. But i do feed a lot of DT's. I know you know your stuff and i read your post all the time just though i would add the fact's i have exp.

[PerryinCA]

Sorry to hear about your loss.

As for my dads....

He has a goiniopora in a 55 with moderate waterflow, 440w VHO, and is skimmed by a (poor working) Red Sea Berlin. The coral has done great, but I have been notiicing on every trip home that it seems to look less happy everytime I go. Last time I was home I did a complete water check, and everything looked great (well the calcoium was in the high 300's, but thats not too bad). He had just done a water change and everything else seemed to be doing great (which includes some Bryopsis, and those small colonial bubbletip anemones....you think aptasia is bad!?). I think that the goniopora is starting to show rescession and its been about 16 months in the tank.

The tank is fed every other, or third, day with a fair amount of DT's.

This just furthers my belief that Fish stores should be banned from selling them, unless they are captively propped. That tank is very "lagoonal" and I don't think that the GP will last the next coulpe months. Dad knows better now . His is one of the very common green ones....I fogot the name, and all my books are at my parents house for his reference.

-Perry

Thanks for the heads up Ninong. I did a little hunting and found it.

[Ninong]

alf3482,

The only reason people speculate that it might be easier to maintain Goniopora in a tank without a skimmer is because such a tank would have more particulate matter and natural plankton. You would still need to supplement with something like DT's, or home grown, phytoplankton on a regular basis, probably twice a day provided you don't overdo it.

Glad to hear you are having success with yours.

Ninong

[SPasse]

Hi All,

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

One on the on hand, Rob Toonen’s statement about the overall survivability of the species in the hobbyist’s system is perfectly correct. For 9 out of ten reef keepers. Goniopora slowly starves to death.

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.

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

[organicreefer]

i just put a flowerpot in my tank
i now have:
a cleaner wrasse
a goniopora
and a tang in a 120

am i a bad,bad reefer

my mom called me up today and asked if she could buy me a coral(she knows just a little ,and definitely knows im into it).
so like any sane reefer i said 'sure"
she said "so i can just pick one out"
i said"sure pick the one you like

this is what i get.oh well, ill give it my best shot .its been in the tank a few hours and still isnt opening

spasse you said you wouldnt reccomend a green one...its green

anyway i put it on top of a rock in strong current /light....do you think its in the right spot???

[PerryinCA]

Due to the natural environment Goniopora are found in I would recommend putting it in a medial flow area of the sandbed. I would also start building sandbed diversity as much as possible by getting detrivors and/or getting sand from other reef tanks that are somewhat established. It will do fine in lower (not low) light situations.

-Perry

[organicreefer]

perry thanks for the advice,its still not expanding today....maybe too much current???i talked to my mom ,she said it was expanded about 5-6 inches in the store...im getting lik 1-2..maybe it just needs time??
delbeek and sprung says high current/ light...but my gut insticnt is telling me this coral is not expanding because of the flow,im gonna move it and see what happens.thanks

[PerryinCA]

Consistent gentle current should be good. Its best if the 'arms' are swaying, but not bending too much. It can take up to almost a week for it to settle in and fully expand. Hope you have better luck with yours.

-Perry

[ravenmore]

I think we need to, unfortunately, start throwing around full latin names here. I think some species of gonipora are much hardier than others. I THINK (Scott, correct me if I'm wrong) that the green goni's that Spasse refers to are gonipora stokesi - these are notoriously difficult to keep. Gonipora lobata (forgive me, and correct me, if I'm a little off on my latin spellings) are supposed to be much hardier. I seem to recall a discussion in Eric's forum on RC that g. lobata is sometimes sold as "red gonipora" - but then again, I think Eric came back and said he'd never seen this species in a red variation and, that the one or 2 he had seen were possibly an "unidentified" species. These were red with a bluish center to the polyps and, from the anecdotal evidence seemed to be pretty hardy as well. I may try to find a link to that thread.

However, I think it's important to note the species. I think it makes a big difference - jmo.

-Mike

[ravenmore]

here's the thread:

http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin...t=red+gonipora

[PerryinCA]

I agree that ful latin names would be more appropriate, but the truth is that it is merely a rumor that the red ones do better. Never been proven, and nothing I have read about that is even remotely conclusive.

Also, its hard to use binomials when there are different species, some of which share coloration. There is definitely more than one green species and and I believe more than one red as well. Identification is extremely hard without a complete examination (including skeletal).

I find it much more safe to recommend avoiding the Genus entirely as there is no real knowledge as to how it should be kept alive for long periods of time. Speculation yes, good reasoning, not really.

-Perry

[ravenmore]

Sorry - didn't mean to suggest that different color variations meant different species. And yep, for the sake of argument, a red g. stokesi probably wouldn't do much better than a green one.....