flowerpot (alveopora) info please

[dzhuo]

anyone has flowerpot (alveopora)? can you share your experience with me? pretty much all i know now is that flowerpot is difficult to keep and it often die without reason after serveral months. do they like strong, mid or mild current? can they be kept under PC or do they require MH?

 

thanks!

[Steve973]

It might be best not to get one.

[FAC_WNY]

See Goniopora care....

 

However, on that note, you may want to do a search over on RC for "Goniopora"...there are a few people starting to see some success (not just in the keeping of healthy captive colonies, but also in the "resurrection" of failing colonies) with the use of Cyclop-eeze (in the form of Liquid Life MarinePlankton) to feed these Poritid corals.

 

Cheers,

Fred

[dzhuo]

cool, so no one has alveopora or goni experience here. Fred, i have checked out RC already and Jen/Kerry is having great success with goni using Liquid Life. they already help me out a lot. thanks!

[dzhuo]

today i came home and notice my flowerpot is not opening up as much as yesterday. i looked carefully and notice that there are many brown stuff (like brown hair. it's very fine.) that my flowerpot split out from the polys. i don't know what they are. has anyone seen this before? is the flowerpot going to die? most of the polys are closed and the few that opens are spliting out those brown hair from the polys, what's going on? can someone give me some advice?

[dzhuo]

a couple of notes:

 

1. suprisingly, it's starting to open up again after spliting those brown hair out.

 

2. according to my mom, the flowerpot was opening up very large (biggest she's seen) around 3 or 4pm this afternoon before it closed up and split out those brown stuff.

[Angel Higuera]

I have a flower pot. Been had it for over 4 monthe now. I just sprinkle brine schrimp on it every now and then. My clown loves it as a host. It gets HUGE in mid day and closes up when the light are off. I have it in my 20G with only 65w PC over it. I have a med amount of flow. Never had a problem at all. You can see a pic of it on my reef(s) thread. I's on one of the pages but not sure which one.

 

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/showthread...&threadid=53538

 

-Angel

[toomuchnano]

The only time my goni showed success was when I spot fed it phytoplankton every single night under the moonlights. If I stopped for one night it got really ####ed off. All I had to do was keep it fed every night and it would thrive. It even reproduced three times in 6 months. Sadly it succumbed to a calcium overdose after a bad batch of salt.

 

One thing I definately noticed is that it preferred lower amounts of light. It did not like Metal Halide directly but indirectly it seemed fine. I kept it on the sand bed in medium to strong flow.

 

Jacob

[dzhuo]

it's opening up more and more by the minutes...

 

Angel,

yes i saw your flowerpot in the second page but we have different flowerpot. your is goni but mine is alveopora which has a (slightly) better survival rate. the brown stuff is most likely zooxanthellae. a member of RC confirmed that. the spliting out of zooxanthellae could mean my flowerpot is going to die or the sudden incrase of light caused it to dump the excess zooxanthellae. we will see. thanks!

[dzhuo]

Jacob,

i keep mine under 96W PC with medium flow as well. i don't have MH. i notice mine has actually colored it a bit since i have it. in the lfs store, it's almost white without any color. now, the white portion has turned into brown and the brown portion has turned into green. i will get Liquid Life for it in the weekend. plan to feed mine 3 times a week.

 

thanks!

[toomuchnano]

That is a very good sign. The brown zooxanthellae tend to be the normal photosynthesizing type and the brighter colors are usually the UV shielding pigments.

 

Good luck,

As a side note, most Goniopora and Alveopora usually come from VERY nutrient rich waters and tend to be cloudy. Which may explain why target feeding and subdued light are preferable.

 

Jacob

[Mike Maddox]

Check out the advanced aquarist archives (www.advancedaquarist.com) and the advanced forum of reefcentral.com has some interesting threads, as well. Also, post on Anthony's thread on RC - he always has good info.

 

This is, of course, AFTER reading all there is on www.wetwebmedia.com A good start is: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/poritididfaqs.htm

[dzhuo]

D2Rhino,

i have read many articles on flowerpot but i missed the wetwebmedia ones, i will read them now. thanks for the link.

 

thanks!

[dzhuo]

i am worry after reading this in wetwebmedia:

 

NEVER direct MH or PC light for Alveopora

 

other "requirments" like a sand bed, no skimmer, etc i can meet but no PC for alveopora is difficult to accomplish. i simply don't have a place in my tank that do not receive direct PC light.

[aquaman67]

Originally posted by FAC_WNY

See Goniopora care....

 

However, on that note, you may want to do a search over on RC for "Goniopora"...there are a few people starting to see some success (not just in the keeping of healthy captive colonies, but also in the "resurrection" of failing colonies) with the use of Cyclop-eeze (in the form of Liquid Life MarinePlankton) to feed these Poritid corals.

 

Cheers,  

Fred

 

Is this it?

 

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod...=1&N=2004&Nty=1

[FAC_WNY]

That's the animal....I'm not sure if people are getting the same results just feeding straight Cyclop-eeze (which is what the product consists mostly of) or not..but that's what I've heard has been giving people the results they're looking for with these corals.

 

Cheers,

Fred

[dzhuo]

Aquaman/Fred,

yes that's the product i am going to buy as well. like i said, i will feed mine twice a week and see if it helps the flowerpot. i asked the lfs owner whether he has ever feed the flowerpot and he said no. i asked him how long has the flowerpot been in his tank and he said about 3 weeks. the tank that host the flowerpot in the lfs has 2 vho lights about 12" inches away the water surface. the flowerpot extends a lot in his tank but it doesn't show much color. the whole thing is almost all white.

[redparrotbubbles85]

Does it totally rely on food to survive, or does it also photosythesize? also why would it need to be fed even if it does contain zooanthellae(sp) which should provide it with what it needs.

[dzhuo]

bubbles85,

for all the research i have found, flowerpot does indeed have zooxanthellae and is capable of phtosythesize. however, the natural habitat of flowerpot is sandy reef lounge (or similar) so they are not very strong phtosythesize coral and thus rely on feeding from the water column. this is one reason (people start to suspect) why flowerpot slowly die (say 6 months) in a light intense reef tank. MH is so intense that the flowerpot's internal tissue is slowly being burn out and cause them to close up more and more and thus won't be able to feed. it's like small clams (say less than 4 inches), even they are capable of photosythesize, they can't extract enough food from the light and thus require regular feeding until they are bigger.

[dzhuo]

bought Liquid Life today. If anyone has ever used this stuff, can you tell me how you store it? Do you put it in the freezer or do you put it in the refrigator? if you put it in the freezer, will be frozen the liquid up?

 

thanks!

[FAC_WNY]

I believe you store it in the refridgerator.

 

As far as bubbles questions/comments...all corals, photosynthetic or not, still require feeding. Most feed VERY actively, and are highly predatory.

 

Cheers,

Fred

[dzhuo]

Fred,

i think i am going to store it in the freezer because that's what others are doing. The BioPlankton, however, is stored in the refridgerator. They usually let it sit in room temperature for 10 minutes before feeding.

 

thanks!

[dzhuo]

sorry to bring back an old thread but if anyone has used Liquid Life before, can you either post it here or PM me? i have a few more questions regarding storage and feeding method of Liquid Life.

 

thanks!

[ottoman]

My experiences with alveapora:

 

they aren't very photosynthetic they rely mainly on zoo uptake and it seems both from my experiences online and in real life that cylopeeze is the best thing for them. They also are directly affected by alge blooms and macroalge growing in your tank. I found this out when i trimmed down some ugly macro alge that started growing and noticed that the more macro the better for them. Most reefers try to lower the nutrional content of their water (with protein skimmers and the like) but this is their main source of food, so non protein skimmed tanks are better (i have a jbj 12 g stock nanocube). you almost have to over feed cylop for a small tank like a nano i've been trying to find the best amount that wont pollute my water (more water changes and a larger clean up crew may be required with this coral) so we'll see.

[dzhuo]

yes i don't have a protein skimmers. i pretty much don't have any filter except lr, sand and a fuge. lighting is 96W pc for my 10G nano. i bought liquid life and plan to feed mine once or twice a week. when you feed those liquid food, you just drop some into the tank and let the current blow the food around for the flowerpot to eat right? or do you turn off all of your power head and filter and target feed him?

 

thanks!