Goniopora Success Tips

[hypostatic]

So goniopora is one of those corals that everyone says is "IMPOSSIBLE" to culture, or even just keep alive in home aquariums. But I've been great success with a couple of frags I have. So, I figured I'd start a thread where people can share any tips they have on keeping goniopora.

 

Here's the best tip I have. Like any other coral, you should thoroughly inspect the frag/colony before purchasing it. You should make an assessment of the general health of the piece before you get it. Look at the edge of the skeleton, and see if there is any noticeable contraction of the flesh from the edge -- this is a bad sign. Look for any growth -- this is a very good sign. Some examples of growth are tissue growth/spreading over where a piece has been fragged, or new polyps appearing between old ones.

 

Here is a frag of mine, where you can see smaller polyps and buds appearing between the larger polyps:

 

 

So, anyone else have good tips?

[Kellysnano]

I have two - I will take pics to post later. One is a beautiful pink with little blue tips and it thrives and grows. I feed it cyclopeeze and I also put DT phytoplankton in my tank regularly. My other one not so successful. First off it was a lovely yellow color which I have since found out is not a natural color and it was dyed. Despite being side by side in the tank and are treated exactly the same - the yellow one (which is white) doesn't open up and stretch out and looks generally unhappy. It has black stuff on one side that I thought might blow off, but doesn't. My current plan for it is to feed it several times a day with a bottle over top of it. I'm going to try spritzing some DT right on it - alternating with the cyclops. Any thoughts?

 

Anyway - my tip? Don't listen to the LFS employee that tells you yellow is a natural color for goni's - it's not!

 

 

[markalot]

have a red one with purple centers. Might be ORA but was not labeled. Seems to prefer decet lighting and loves reef roids, which I broadcast feed in the tank. Slowy expanding, probably doubles in size in 6 months.

[hypostatic]

Feeding is apparently important. Though I haven't seen mine actually EAT. They difinitely react to food like mysis juice, phyto, and gonipowder, but I haven't actually seen any polyps ingest food.

[Kellysnano]

Interestingly (to me anyway) today I started thinking maybe there was some sort of bug or worm annoying the white one so I put it in a dip today for ten minutes. Turns out the areas that seemed black are actually green. Not sure what that means. But at any rate - after that it did open a little more than it has been.

 

Hypo static - when I feed My healthy pink one it grabs food (looks almost like the grabbing of a pulsating Xenia) and then pulls in. I use a pipette and very gently drop food over it.

[hypostatic]

Post a picture of it. White = bleached = unhappy. Maybe a pic can help figure out something.

 

Also, are you sure it was bleached? From what I've read there are yellow gonis

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2363989

http://www.createareef.com/corals/lps/goniopora-coral/yellow-flower-pot-coral.html

 

From the first link aparently the yellow are much more finicky. But if the case is that your piece was dyed, I understand that the prognosis is often poor for these corals because first they are forced to bleach (which is extremely stressful), and then they are dyed (which is also stressful, and I believe the dye is harmful as well).

 

Here is a good article on dyed corals and also talks about caring for them:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-09/ac/feature/

 

Oh another general tip for the thread:

 

FLOW

Flow is super important. It has to be juuuuust right. Goniopora like moderate to low flow. They need the flow to be random and where their polyps are gently waving in the flow. If the flow is too high where the polyps would be flailing around then it will stress the coral and the polyps will retract. The goni that I showed in th first post will retract pretty quickly if I increase the flow, or turn off the pumps for some reason

[hypostatic]

Oh, DUH, I forgot this really helpful video on feeding

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

I have a pale pink and a peach Goni. Fed with a mix of food that keeps them happy and healthy.

[gogo]

i have a purple-green eyed branching frag in my 2.6 gallon. i feed reef roids, three diff. species of live phyto and live rotis. no fish...i use air only for water movement. par 30 light . comes out in the day. goes to sleep at night. it gets p.o. 'd when the porcelain crab spends a few days hosting. had it for some time....

i've been reefing for a while, and this is the first colony i've had any success with. i think its success is due to it being a frag.

[TheKleinReef]

i'm not sure if this is gonoipora or alevopora, but i've had it for almost 2.5 years. it does extremely well under alot of light. 500W of halides. it also loves random flow, and hates being pushed in one direction (like most corals do).

 

minimal feedings, just fish pee and poo. occasional reef chili.

http://s147.photobucket.com/user/roger_090/media/43F82E97-C628-4587-B90A-CB568070088E.jpg.html'>

[hypostatic]

count the tentacles on the polyps. if 12 its an alveopora. if 24 its goniopora

[hypostatic]

Oh here's a question to those of you who have had goniopora grow in your tanks: how often do you feed your tanks?

 

I keep a pretty nutrient rich tank. I feed multiple times per day. I run GFO for PO4 and carbon for the chemical warfare that gonis produce. And I'm not too diligent about water changes....

 

So, what about everyone else?

[Kellysnano]

Not the best picture of the white one -but as you can see, the pink one is healthy - has doubled in size and eats well. The one right beside it, isn't doing well. I gave it a dip yesterday and for two days have

covered it with a bottle and fed every couple of hours. Its a little more extended today, so maybe it will come back.

 

 

 

[hypostatic]

Anyone dose iron? There are lots of anecdotal reports of goniopora doing well when iron is supplemented, and even cases where the aquarist noticed quick improvement when they started adding iron:

http://forums.saltwaterfish.com/t/169622/iron-and-flowerpots-goniopora

 

I actually dose Kent Iron & Manganese, and my gonis seem to be doing well

[hypostatic]

Speaking of iron, these two articles go in depth about iron in reef tanks, and are worth checking out:

 

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/8/chemistry

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/10/chemistry

[uvhk]

I have green and red gonioporas in my tank. I place them in middle of the tank and flow is moderate. I feed them either brine or mysis shrimp or goniopower twice in a week. I have T5HO lights. They have grown so much in size and do really really well.

 

One thing you may want to notice is algae . If you have coraline algae growing too fast in your tank and have oe or two polyps of goni that are dead and exposed the calcium skeleton, then coraline algae may encrust and start spreading across.When this happens, the goni polyps will close and finally die.

 

This happened to one of the frags I made from parent colony. Below are the links to my colonies.

 

http://www.nano-reef.com/gallery/image/39937-green-and-red-goniopora/

 

http://www.nano-reef.com/gallery/image/39865-red-goniopora/

[gogo]

i use iron once in a while to boost my phyto. i wonder if its got any benefit to the gonis.

[uvhk]

Phyto or any plankton food is always good for goniopora.

[hypostatic]

i could be both the iron and the phyto that are benefiting your gonis

[ZephNYC]

In examination of goniopora "stomachs", it has been found that that they dont really consume phyto, but larger zooplanktons. Rotifers and live baby brine shrimp are best. As far as Iron, it has been proven to increase the coloration of bleached out goinioporas. I have 12 goinioporas, most which started as frags with just a couple of polyps and are now massive colonies.9 of them are in here, the rest are in other aquariums.

[hypostatic]

In examination of goniopora "stomachs", it has been found that that they dont really consume phyto, but larger zooplanktons. Rotifers and live baby brine shrimp are best.

 

mmm, yes, I think I do recall reading this in an article, by justin credible i think? Wait, maybe not. this article by justin says that "Gut contents of some Goniopora have been a roughly even mix of phytoplankton and zooplankton (Toonen, 1999; Borneman, 2001)."

 

His cited literature:

Borneman, E. H. 2001. Aquarium Corals: Selection, Husbandry, and Natural History. Microcosm/TFH, Neptune City. 464pp.

Toonen, Rob. 1999. Goniopora success?! Reefkeepers email list, December 1999.

 

 

As far as Iron, it has been proven to increase the coloration of bleached out goinioporas.

 

I'm assuming that there's a strong correlation between overall health, and coloration. The link i provided previously mentioned how an aquarist's goni improved noticeably after the addition of iron.

 

EDIT:

 

Oh, and here's a quote from http://www.reefs.org/library/article/r_toonen20.html

 

"Feeding attempts with newly hatched brine shrimp were unsuccessful, and despite repeated contact with the tentacles, these prey were far too large for the animals to actually ingest. In fact, repeated contact with the tentacles led to the tentacles retracting and therefore an end to feeding rather than the animals actually being fed. Gut content analyses of polyps excised from wild colonies revealed that the majority of the prey were microcrustaceans (copepods and their larvae, juvenile mysids, barnacle cyprids and such) but much of the diet appeared to consist of a mixture of phytoplankton and other tiny non-crustacean plankton (such as polychaete and mollusc larvae, ciliates, and rotifers) of the same size range. Turns out that phytoplankton was found in the guts of every animal examined and probably accounts for a significant proportion of the nutrient uptake by these corals, and was the only prey type that showed significant variation in capture rate by tidal regime or day versus night-time sampling."

 

EDIT:

 

Oh man, that's a great article with lots of good information. This is an excellent paragraph:

 

"Given the results of Meredith's research, it is not surprising that the occasional reports we see for the maintenance and growth of these corals tend to be lagoonal or refugium-type systems with intense lighting and plenty of opportunity for the capture of tiny plankton and invertebrate larvae. It is also not surprising that a typical pattern of apparent health last for some months before the animal begins to show the signs of starvation (due to both deprivation of planktonic prey and the resultant decrease in photosynthetic ability) followed by a decline and eventually the death of the colony occurs in the majority of reef tanks (in which these type of prey are rarely provided in sufficient numbers). The animals do not need a lot of prey -- Meredith found that supplementing the feeding of wild colonies did not significantly increase growth rate, suggesting that the animals are not prey limited at natural feeding rates (roughly 50% of the polyps contained prey items of the sort outlined above at any given time), but decreasing the amount of prey captured obviously has a strong negative impact. These results explain the observation that adding declining animals to a well-stocked and highly productive deep sandbed system (such as Morgan's at IA) typically results in a complete recovery of the colony, because the renewed capture of phytoplankton and invertebrate larvae in addition to providing nutrition to the colony, in turn should lead to the increase of zooxanthellar output and both contribute the revival of the colony."

 

This furthers my theory that they are best suited for refugium-type or nutrient-rich setups

[hypostatic]

In examination of goniopora "stomachs", it has been found that that they dont really consume phyto, but larger zooplanktons. Rotifers and live baby brine shrimp are best. As far as Iron, it has been proven to increase the coloration of bleached out goinioporas. I have 12 goinioporas, most which started as frags with just a couple of polyps and are now massive colonies.9 of them are in here, the rest are in other aquariums.

 

And here is an interview supporting the idea that they eat zoo, and not phyto

https://www.bluezooaquatics.com/resources.asp?show=353

 

In any event, I think the consensus would be that they eat some type of really small plankton.

[hypostatic]

Some more exerpts from Gonipora Success!? By Rob Toonen. I highly suggest anyone interested in the care of this genus read it

http://www.reefs.org/library/article/r_toonen20.html

 

"my guess for the standard "thriving for 4-6 months followed by decline and death around 1 year" pattern reported for these corals is starvation. The reports, like Julian's as well as that of Inland Aquatics (Morgan Lidster), in which the animals are doing well, are usually in a lagoonal setting, typically with a well-established sandbed, and lots of "refugium-type" fauna in the system."

 

"She did a research project at One Tree Island in Australia and suggested that the corals may not be capable of supporting themselves on photosynthesis alone, and *worse* when deprived of food, she found that photosynthetic rate (as estimated from CN ratios of zooxanthellae) actually *dropped*." ... "but this makes the feeding all the more critical to the health and survival of the coral."

 

"Gut content analyses of polyps excised from wild colonies revealed that the majority of the prey were microcrustaceans (copepods and their larvae, juvenile mysids, barnacle cyprids and such) but much of the diet appeared to consist of a mixture of phytoplankton and other tiny non-crustacean plankton (such as polychaete and mollusc larvae, ciliates, and rotifers) of the same size range. Turns out that phytoplankton was found in the guts of every animal examined and probably accounts for a significant proportion of the nutrient uptake by these corals, and was the only prey type that showed significant variation in capture rate by tidal regime or day versus night-time sampling."

 

"it is not surprising that the occasional reports we see for the maintenance and growth of these corals tend to be lagoonal or refugium-type systems with intense lighting and plenty of opportunity for the capture of tiny plankton and invertebrate larvae. It is also not surprising that a typical pattern of apparent health last for some months before the animal begins to show the signs of starvation (due to both deprivation of planktonic prey and the resultant decrease in photosynthetic ability) followed by a decline and eventually the death of the colony occurs in the majority of reef tanks (in which these type of prey are rarely provided in sufficient numbers)."

 

"The animals do not need a lot of prey -- Meredith found that supplementing the feeding of wild colonies did not significantly increase growth rate, suggesting that the animals are not prey limited at natural feeding rates (roughly 50% of the polyps contained prey items of the sort outlined above at any given time), but decreasing the amount of prey captured obviously has a strong negative impact."

 

"These results explain the observation that adding declining animals to a well-stocked and highly productive deep sandbed system (such as Morgan's at IA) typically results in a complete recovery of the colony, because the renewed capture of phytoplankton and invertebrate larvae in addition to providing nutrition to the colony, in turn should lead to the increase of zooxanthellar output and both contribute the revival of the colony."

[gogo]

rotifers for sure..... phyto for sure.... you know when your animals are feeding.

[hypostatic]

rotifers for sure..... phyto for sure.... you know when your animals are feeding.

 

They'll react to bigger food, but I'm positive they don't eat anything much bigger. Like, the tentacles of the polyps will close up around brine or mysis shrimp like it would eat it, but the polyp will just open up a little later and the shrimp will just fall off