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Bought a strawberry nephthya


MiltonCastillo

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MiltonCastillo

I think it is a scleronephthya not a dendronephthya. It is a neon orange color (both stalk and polyps which I guess that is why it is a scleronephthya). I know it is supposed to be a lot of work but it was too beautiful to pass up.

 

Anybody here has any experience with them?

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i've got an orange sclero too. just got it though. feeding the crap out of it. lemme know how it goes.

 

*if it's soft it's sclero... if it's spikey it's dendro. ;)

 

in the pic it hasn't open yet... it's opened up a lil more sinse then.

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MiltonCastillo

Had to dig through the trash from a couple of days ago and found the receipt. It is definately a sclero - receipt says strawberry scleronephthya (even though it is neon orange).

 

What are you feeding yours? I am putting 2-3 drops of Kent's PhytoPlex and a pinch of Cyclop-Eeze on a daily basis. By the way, I have a 12 gallon nano cube.

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mine's in a 30. i read they they primarily get all of their food through phyto. larger foods like cyclopeeze are too big for them to injest. i feed the crap out of my tank due to a large number of non-photosynthetic creatures. i feed my tank a mix of foods that included the last time i made some: fish, shrimp, squid, brine, mysis, phytoplankton, cyclopeeze, and selcon. i turn off all my flow and target feed oftenly. and don't always trust the receipt. trust yourself and research. LFS can be wrong a lot of the time. post a pic. i'd love to see how it's doing.

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MiltonCastillo

My scleronephthya looks like the one you posted, except mine is just a tad bigger and has a little brother stalk that is splitting off from the main stalk. I will post a pic when I get a digital camera. By the way, I bought "Vital Combo" today - a mixture of SpectraVital and Black Powder. I have heard great things about the Black Powder - ever try to feed your corals this? It says it works on all types of coral, including "carnation corals" which is another name for these corals.

 

By the way, do you think 2-3 drops of target feeding of PhytoPlex and this Vital Combo will be sufficient on a daily basis for this coral? Since this is my only non-photo, and I don't run a skimmer, I don't want to overfeed (I have other filter feeders though that would consume some of the surplus).

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dude I have allot of exp with non photosynthetic corals and putting it blunt three drops a day just isn't enough. you need to get some decent flow on it and you will need to feed a cap full of phyto a day if you want any chance of keeping it alive. That's the min I would say. this will strain your bio load limit and may well cause an algae out break. this is why I only house them in non lit tanks so the water quality can be nutrient rich but no algae occurs. oh and 75% of its diet is phyto so get dosing.

 

Hope that helps ya

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MiltonCastillo

Are you telling me this coral is as good as dead? I can't imagine dosing a capful a day (capful = 5ml = 50 drops) of phytoplex - wouldn't this just turn the 12gal nano cube into a algea farm?

 

I tried returning the coral to the store, but they said they would only take it back on consignment and I would get back only 1/3 when sold! I thought this was not fair since I had bought it just 2 days prior ($48) and I feel the salesperson did not warn me of the requirements even though I asked. And if they already made their profit on me, why do they want 66% to sell it again? The salesperson also knew that I was a newbie since I had spoken with him on previous occasions. I think I will take my business elsewhere in the future. Am I wrong on this?

 

I feel I should try to feed it about 5 drops of Phytoplex, a pinch of Vital Combo and a pinch of Cyclop-Eeze on a daily basis, and hope for the best. I hate to lose it, but I feel that I shouldn't hurt the rest of the tank to try to save one coral.

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danieljames
Originally posted by MiltonCastillo

 

 I think I will take my business elsewhere in the future.  Am I wrong on this?

 

 

Heck no! Take your money elsewhere. You should have been told bro. Imo......

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ouch... you'll probably feel even worse knowing that i only paid $10 for mine and it has two babies. read this article for more info:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan...002/feature.htm

idunno where invert got his 75% from unless he actually disected his corals and inspected it... most scientists aren't really sure how much of it's diet consists of what. i'm also not sure about how much to feed them because i use a different phyto. how much does it say to put for your size tank? i'd feed that ammount but a lot more often. turning off the flow during feeding time may help to increase the contact time between your coral and its food. but in between feeding times invert's right in telling you that they need flow. anyway... read the article it's packed full of good info.

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turning the flow off when feeding is a bad idea. most non-photosynthetic corals require a specific rate of water motion around them to be able to capture prey. so if you were to turn the flow off they cannot feed. the article posted backs this up if you want a ref. I have been looking at the set-up in the article and I can see a few reason that may or may not be why there test failed but I don't want to hijack the post so maybe another time.

 

1/3 of the price is about what most lfs will give you if you want to sell it to them. you can dose 5ml cap into a 12 gallon and keep your levels under control if you do it slowly. but you will get algae growth because of the high light.

 

I don’t know what to say to you because so many people buy these coral and don’t provide the correct environment for them.

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oh and any info I can get from u all would be much appreciated as I like to get lots of peoples experiences with these corals.

 

if you don't mind I would like to know your:

 

water parameters

size of tank

lighting

any non-photosynthetic corals u have and observations

how long you have had them for

how long the tank has been running

and what u feed them

 

cheers

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  • 2 weeks later...

sorry for the late reply...

water parameters: haven't checked for a while

tank: 30 tall (since it's tall it doesn't have a large footprint to place corals in light i've got the non-photosynthetics for the darker areas)

lighting: 4x65PCs

i'm gonna have to guess on these next ones

age: pink dendro- 4mo

orange dednro- 2mo (previous owner had it much longer)

orange tubastraea- bout half a year

yellow tubastraea- 2mo

black tubastraea- 3mo (was held by a friend of mine while i was on vacation before

it first saw my tank... so it's been in captivity longer than 3mo)

orange sclero- 1 1/2mo

blue acalycigorgia- 1 1/2mo

red w/ yellow polyps gorg- 1 1/2mo

 

tank started as a 20 about a year and a half ago and about half a year ago became the 30gal.

 

i feed them the juice when i feed meaty foods that consists of a frozen misture of: fish, brine, mysis, squid, silversides, prawns, cyclopeeze, phyto, & selcon. on other days i feed just the latter three for filter feeders. they also get food when i clean the glass and something i've noticed that they like a lot is stirring up the gravel and blowing detritus from the rocks.

and i did read somewhere that feeding with the flow of does work. as in that article when feeding "in a dish of seawater" (i doubt there was pumps in that dish) "polyps easily grasped" food. good flow is needed though to get the food to 'em if you're not target feeding or when you feed for example by stirring up the sand bed. i feed with and with out flow on.

 

what's your story? you seem to be more experienced in non-photosynthetics than me and any info would be helpful. these animals are very beautiful, but as we both know difficult to keep.

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For what it's worth, you can try feeding with Liquidlife phytoplankton. Their product is non-viable (meaning that it won't reproduce) but provides nutrition to your corals. That way you won't have an algae bloom.

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Lol I nearly missed this.

 

I started keeping non-photosynthetic corals years ago. My first one died. It was a scleronephthya. It never opened and just melted away. It was like this when I got it and I didn’t know about their care. Once it had died I wanted to know what happened and that is how I got started. I then got a few large colonies of scleronephthya and was able to keep them alive for 2 years then I sold them as I closed down my 160 gal tank. I then got a 29 gall nano. I kept some more scleronephthya in there for the 2 years it was running. I crowning glory would have to be a the red tree sponge that I kept for 2 years before I sold (going to uni soon). From what I have read this is FIRST as most people find they die a 6 months. It was the first invert in the 29 because my mum brought it without telling me. When I got it, it had allot of white dead areas. People say to cut it off and remove it but that doesn't actually help. The best way I have found is to put some cloves on and place it in front of a power head. All the dead area will shoot off leaving the sponge unharmed. If you don’t wear gloves the spongin (skeleton structure of a sponge) will get stuck in your had and it’s a pain in the but. I now know loads of tips for anyone who wants to keep a tree sponge. I have not had success with dendros yet but I’m working on it and I’m sure I will get it soon. I have kept tubestria and diodogorgia also before sold. A tip for the tubestria would be to use cockle and hand feed a piece to each polyp. The cockle is allot less messy than frozen food and wont do you water quality in. the key to my success has been adding large quantities of phyto on a daily basis not just a few drops know and then. In the 29 I was dosing 10mls or two capfuls a day. No its not a typo. I fed the fish frozen foods but it wasn’t allot. I also had a refugeium. No skimmer as noticed decline in my corals when it was running.

 

29 specs

32x12x18

15watt no 18000k

A huge power head for main movement it was an Hagen 802 400 gph (not a typo)

5 hagen 101 100 gph for spot flow

35 pounds of live rock

Bare bottom

5 gal refugeium with grape calurpa

 

Inhabitants

Neon goby

Clown goby

Perc Clown fish

Watchman goby and pistol shrimp

Porcelain crab

Hermits and snails

Tube worms

Fanworms

Yellow, orange, red, red purple and orange, and pink Scleronephthya 2 years

Red ball sponge 2 years

Yellow ball sponge 2 years

Tubastraea 2 years

Chilli coral 3 years

Swifttia 1.5 years

Dendro 6 months (was to early to tell if it was surviving)

Some white tunicates that went over most of the liverock in the low flow areas.

 

 

Sadly all sold because I cant take a tank to uni with me :(

Lol I have writen tomuch so I will stop bu I have loads more to tell.

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I forgot to say that all corals and inverts were healthy and growing when sold after the stated time period of care.

hope this helps you.

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thanks a lot... i barely noticed your reply too. i have some other questions about details but i'll take them to PMs instead. we've went off subject enough on someonelse's thread already.

 

milton, any updates?

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