How hard can it be to keep GONIOPORA?

[Nembo]

For longterm success to need to be feeding it at least daily with the right foods.Oyster eggs seem good but for a main diet I'd use a specialist food tailored especially for this coral such as tlf goniopower diet.

[thebanker]

To update on that list, I was able to "train" my goni to eat Reef Roids. It didn't react to them at first, at all. Now it shows a feeding response.

[andrepeixoto]

Originally Posted by thebanker

To update on that list, I was able to "train" my goni to eat Reef Roids. It didn't react to them at first, at all. Now it shows a feeding response.

How is goniopora doing? I just got one this weekend.

[shred5]

wow old thread.

This is my most recent goni. This was afew hours after adding it tot he tank, barely open but cool color.



Slower grower but encrusting goni real cool colors.



Ora red goni, not a good picture but it has tripled in size.If you are new to them it is the easiest and a good one too start with and easy to get.



a newer Goni of mine..



Old picture this one has over doubled in size since the pic:



This is a super fast grower. It started as a small frag and is getting big, doubles since this pic.



This one is hard and has done very little.



I have about a dozen other varieties that are hard to get a picture of or just don have a pic of yet, most are frags.

[Pastey]

I've had my ORA Goni (red) for ~8 months now which is by no means a testament to it's ability to thrive in an aquarium (or my inability to kill it...yet). I target feed Reef Chili from time to time and I get a pretty consistent feeding response. It's been a while so I'll try to make a point to video next time or maybe get some macro shots like this one and do a time lapse of feeding.

[andrepeixoto]

Nice collection David!!! What is you tank setup?

[shred5]

Originally Posted by andrepeixoto

Nice collection David!!! What is you tank setup?

Thank you..

Actually they all just moved from a 75 to a 90..

I think the key to my success is food. I have 5 Ignitus anthias and they get fed 6 to 8 times aday. Since it is really small food for the anthias the goni's get allot of it..
I feed the ignitus mainly frozen foods like bbs, cyclops, Rods food, mysis. They also get calanus which some of the goni's love. I also feed live BBS sometimes.

I feed the goni's directly also with gonipower and reef chili once in a great while.

They also like oyster eggs and Nutramar Ova which you can not get.

I also add bacteria a couple times a week and add a slight amount of carbon to the tank to feed bacteria. I dont dose carbon in the amount that people do for unls systems or bacteria driven systems like zeovit but just enough to promote growth of bacteria. Most probably gets skimmed out but I believe the goni's that don't show a feeding response do capture some bacteria and it benefits them.

I will tell you they are very touchy corals. Sometime just sticking my hand in the water and they close up..
I also recommend no shrimp or crabs because they irritate them and like to take food way damaging them.

i have always been fascinated by goni's and gorgonia. Everyone is keeping sticks or acans etc. I guess I just like keeping stuff other are not. But both benefit greatly from feeding.
Success in goni's is not measured in month's it is years.

[xxsevxx]

My Clown just started to hang out in my Goni the SAME day i introduced a RBTA into my tank. Should i remove the Goni and wait for him to make a home in the RBTA then put it back? Ive had the Goni about 5 months and it has doubled in size almost, i do not want to lose it because of the clown.

[shred5]

Originally Posted by xxsevxx

My Clown just started to hang out in my Goni the SAME day i introduced a RBTA into my tank. Should i remove the Goni and wait for him to make a home in the RBTA then put it back? Ive had the Goni about 5 months and it has doubled in size almost, i do not want to lose it because of the clown.

You could try. Clown hosting a goni is sometime ok, sometimes it bothers them and sometimes it will kill them.

I think allot has to do with what the clowns do. one possible idea is if a clown jump from coral to coral or jumps from anemone to the goni some of the slime can kill the goni or irritates it enough it closes up and dies's. Also the clowns sometimes get to ruff on them.

You may remove the goni and the clown may go to the anemone or may not. If it does go to the anemone once you put the goni back in it there is a small chance it may go right back to the goni. I would say it is worth a try if you have another tank to put the goni in temporarily.

You could just try moving the goni to a new spot and then moving the anemone into the spot the goni was might help.

[rt67ghy]

I have 2 goniopora stokesis; both of which I got at the same time in April. One is green and the other one is purple. The green one is doing great but the purple one was closed for some time and shrank a lot (probably due to too much handling and shifting its position in the tank). I started target feeding them every day with Reef Roids and sometimes Coral Frenzy at the beginning of this month and dosing Kent Marine's Iron and Manganese.

Here's a pic of my green goniopora stokesi feeding on Coral Frenzy
http://imgur.com/55jxER0

I'm seeing the purple goniopora stokesi recovering and showing more PE. I attribute the gradual recovery to the two-pronged approach of: 1) daily feeding and 2) dosing iron and manganese (as suggested by Julian Sprung to reverse slow tissue shrinkage in Goniopora stokesi)
So, I'm hopeful I can prevent it from dying.

[shred5]

Originally Posted by rt67ghy

I have 2 goniopora stokesis; both of which I got at the same time in April. One is green and the other one is purple. The green one is doing great but the purple one was closed for some time and shrank a lot (probably due to too much handling and shifting its position in the tank). I started target feeding them every day with Reef Roids and sometimes Coral Frenzy at the beginning of this month and dosing Kent Marine's Iron and Manganese.

Here's a pic of my green goniopora stokesi feeding on Coral Frenzy
http://imgur.com/55jxER0

I'm seeing the purple goniopora stokesi recovering and showing more PE. I attribute the gradual recovery to the two-pronged approach of: 1) daily feeding and 2) dosing iron and manganese (as suggested by Julian Sprung to reverse slow tissue shrinkage in Goniopora stokesi)
So, I'm hopeful I can prevent it from dying.

Goniopora is very hard to ID.. As far as I know Stokesi only comes green or green/brownish so your blue is probably something else. I still do not know anyone who has kept a true Stokesi alive more than 2 years.

[rt67ghy]

Originally Posted by shred5

Goniopora is very hard to ID.. As far as I know Stokesi only comes green or green/brownish so your blue is probably something else. I still do not know anyone who has kept a true Stokesi alive more than 2 years.

Thanks for the comment. Although when I got the 2 gonis my LFS didn't tell me the species I was getting, after doing some research I found that they most closely resembled G. srokesi; that is, they were spherical, were more susceptible to tissue shrinkage than a lot of other gonis and they resembled the G.stokesis I saw on the internet when I see full PE on them. This is coupled with the fact that G.stokesi is supposed to be the goniopra which is most commonly shipped. All these factors made me assume I had G. stokesis. My green one is actually not very green; it is brownish with a faint green tinge to the tentacles. The other is also brownish in colour but with a slight purple tinge. I'm giving a few more pics of the 'green' one from different angles. When closed it's the size of a tennis ball. I don't mind if they are not G. stokesi since I love gonis in general but I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could give me positive ID on it. TIA

http://imgur.com/ufalZbq

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[shred5]

Originally Posted by rt67ghy

Thanks for the comment. Although when I got the 2 gonis my LFS didn't tell me the species I was getting, after doing some research I found that they most closely resembled G. srokesi; that is, they were spherical, were more susceptible to tissue shrinkage than a lot of other gonis and they resembled the G.stokesis I saw on the internet when I see full PE on them. This is coupled with the fact that G.stokesi is supposed to be the goniopra which is most commonly shipped. All these factors made me assume I had G. stokesis. My green one is actually not very green; it is brownish with a faint green tinge to the tentacles. The other is also brownish in colour but with a slight purple tinge. I'm giving a few more pics of the 'green' one from different angles. When closed it's the size of a tennis ball. I don't mind if they are not G. stokesi since I love gonis in general but I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could give me positive ID on it. TIA

http://imgur.com/ufalZbq

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View post on imgur.com

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It is hard to tell from pictures sometimes, It does look like it could be Stokesi. Problem about trying to id off the internet is allot of the ID's are wrong especially with this coral. Stokesi also looks like a few other goniopora especially in pictures like goniopora lobata. With pictures it is hard to tell length of polyp or really size of anything without some reference like a ruler behind it. I have bought a frag goni that I thought had large polyps looking at the pic but they were really small, it was a maco shot on a frag plug the size of a dime.

Sometimes it comes down to the size of the coralites. Plus the length of tentacles and length of of the polyps change with current and light.

I have not even got a id for half mine, but I never really tried. There are so many species and only a slight difference between some of them. I think there is over 30 species and allot you wont even find a picture for. There are a few that are easy to tell and other impossible.. I see a goniopora stutchburyii that has recently been selling as Candy Apple Porites. Porities and goniopora are the same family though.

Yours looks to be doing pretty well and that is what matters.

[rt67ghy]

Thanks for the comments. Next time I'll try to get a picture with a scale next to it for reference.

There's a gulf of difference in the care requirements between the 'easier' gonis and the more difficult varieties as I discovered. Here's one which I got free from my LFS since it came on a piece of LR. It's one of my first corals and my easiest coral requiring no target feeding but it's doing great. I don't know the name of the species but it looks like a 'daisy coral'.

http://imgur.com/MYPaIj5

[shred5]

Originally Posted by rt67ghy

Thanks for the comments. Next time I'll try to get a picture with a scale next to it for reference.

There's a gulf of difference in the care requirements between the 'easier' gonis and the more difficult varieties as I discovered. Here's one which I got free from my LFS since it came on a piece of LR. It's one of my first corals and my easiest coral requiring no target feeding but it's doing great. I don't know the name of the species but it looks like a 'daisy coral'.

http://imgur.com/MYPaIj5

That looks like possible:
Goniopora eclipsensis

[rt67ghy]

The above is an encrusting goni. I took a couple of macro shots and noticed it's actually greenish in colour. The lower white patches near the bottom are new growth.

http://imgur.com/g2inSNt
http://imgur.com/H1MobqF

[nanodude87]

Some really stunning pieces!

[nanodude87]

I'm tempted to pick up an ORA red Goni but I've only got a 28g nano so I'm debating whether or not it will get too big too quickly for the nano.

[shred5]

Originally Posted by nanodude87

I'm tempted to pick up an ORA red Goni but I've only got a 28g nano so I'm debating whether or not it will get too big too quickly for the nano.

I had one in a AIO 30 gallon and it was fine. It was a large one too. The ones I have seen lately are a lot smaller but it can get rather big and it can sting some corals.

[Xxero]

Taken this afternoon:



I've had it for a little over a month now, and it's doing great so far. I would say it receives medium light and likes low-flow water movement. I target feed it Brine/Mysis shrimp maybe once a week, and I add Coral Frenzy into the water column on occasion. I keep my water as pristine as possible, but I also feed quite a bit...is that an oxymoron?

[rt67ghy]

That has great polyp extension. If you drop Coral Frenzy on top of it, you'll find it'll eat the pellets it can catch.

[Mark9]

Picked this up yesterday, supposedly Australian and easier to keep than the greens.
At least that's what the lfs said.

[Xxero]

Ooh la la! That's nice!

I'd like to have a red like that with a yellow also, and dedicate a corner of my tank to them. I think they're stunning.

[nanodude87]

Originally Posted by shred5

I had one in a AIO 30 gallon and it was fine. It was a large one too. The ones I have seen lately are a lot smaller but it can get rather big and it can sting some corals.

Well today I was given two little frags of goni (red and green) and an alveopora by someone who was moving away and needed to unload some stuff... I guess we will see how it goes!

[cvore2004]

Is this a goniopora? I found an article which has a picture very similar describing it as such, but I've had others tell me it's galaxea.



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