Not my smartest purchase but looking for advice/success stories. Take a look w/ pics

[Froggy]

Hi all,

I did what I usually try to avoid and purchased a coral for my mixed 75 gallon reef that does not have a good track record in captivity. I try to leave these items at the store, when I see them. I decided to try once and it may be the last time depending how this experiment goes.

Well, I decided to try a non-photosynthetic Gorgonian. A Blueberry Gorgonian to be specific. I understand they are specialty feeders and from what I have read and researched some limited success has been found target feeding Cyclopeeze and Phytoplankton. I plan to feed both DT's and Cyclopeeze daily. It seems that they tend to wither away between 6 months and a year in most cases. With todays advances, I am hoping some may have some information to help me have success with this coral. Here are a couple of pics of it.





Please comment with advice to help or feel free to flame me if you do not agree with the purchase. I still have BIG reservations myself.

Here is another purchase I made that I have no problem with. They are drab but I wanted to add motion to my mixed reef. I added a pretty large colony of Clove polyps seen in the rear of the picture below.



Thanks for looking and any advice you can give.

[Sk8r]

It's beautiful. The best advice I can give is be fanatic about your water: try to BE the ocean. Lighting---we can only guess. But you know what good water is, and the more stable you can keep it 24/7, with no great change in anything, the better. The feeding sounds exactly right.

[HowardW]

I feed mine a mixture of DT's Reef Blend Phyto, DT's oyster eggs, baby brine, and Selcon using a small pipette with all the pumps and skimmer turned off, I do this twice a week.

[Froggy]

Originally posted by HowardW
I feed mine a mixture of DT's Reef Blend Phyto, DT's oyster eggs, baby brine, and Selcon using a small pipette with all the pumps and skimmer turned off, I do this twice a week.

Howard, can you please tell me how long you have had yours using this feeding schedule?

Also, what kind of flow do you have yours in. It is my understanding that they like/prefer lots of flow. I have mine in fairly heavy flow and it is still opening up fine so it doesn't seem to be too heavy.

[Froggy]

Originally posted by Sk8r
It's beautiful. The best advice I can give is be fanatic about your water: try to BE the ocean. Lighting---we can only guess. But you know what good water is, and the more stable you can keep it 24/7, with no great change in anything, the better. The feeding sounds exactly right.

Thanks. I do not think lighting will be an issue as it seems to be opening up under the bright lighting. I feel you are correct about keeping water quality extemely stable.

[HowardW]

Originally posted by Froggy
Howard, can you please tell me how long you have had yours using this feeding schedule?

About 8 months so far. They are probably not the hardiest of gorgonians to keep in captivity, but very attractive.

[Froggy]

Originally posted by HowardW
About 8 months so far. They are probably not the hardiest of gorgonians to keep in captivity, but very attractive.

Thanks Howard. I hope you keep having success with yours.

Can you please comment on where you have yours placed for flow?

[J4Life]

I thought that I would throw this suggestion out there. You may want to purchase some Golden Pearls from www.brineshrimpdirect.com and maybe get a couple of different sizes to offer it. 5-50 micron is what I use for my reef tank. They are far cheaper than Oyster Eggs and I believe they work just as good. Being that Gorgonians are filter feeders. I don't know how much phyto plankton will help with them. Also depending on the polyp size I would not be certain they will eat even Cyclopeeze since they are close to 800 microns in size. However if you do see that they're eating them I would also add some frozen Hikari Daphnia to your feeding regiment as well.

HTH's,
Bill

[HowardW]

Originally posted by Froggy
Thanks Howard. I hope you keep having success with yours.

Can you please comment on where you have yours placed for flow?

I keep mine placed in a high flow area about 6-8" away from a Koralia #2 pump.


J4Life, I'm not certain exactly which type or size food they are actually ingesting and is benefiting them which is why I offer them a variety.

[pledosophy]

Good Luck. IME target feeding daily with DT's was not enough. JME

[J4Life]

Howard I understand that is why I was suggesting the Golden pearls from brine shrimp direct. Very inexpensive and the 5-50 micron will benefit all of your other corals as well including SPS and softies too. I feed 1 little scoop every other day to my tank and I am skimmerless.

My guess is that it probably feeds on things smaller than 200 microns in size if that is the case then only Golden Pearls or DT's Oyster Eggs will do the trick.

Just keep a close eye on it at feeding time. You should be able to tell if it is eating cyclopeeze or not.

[Froggy]

Originally posted by J4Life
Howard I understand that is why I was suggesting the Golden pearls from brine shrimp direct. Very inexpensive and the 5-50 micron will benefit all of your other corals as well including SPS and softies too. I feed 1 little scoop every other day to my tank and I am skimmerless.

My guess is that it probably feeds on things smaller than 200 microns in size if that is the case then only Golden Pearls or DT's Oyster Eggs will do the trick.

Just keep a close eye on it at feeding time. You should be able to tell if it is eating cyclopeeze or not.

Thank you for the input. You are probably right. I will need to Pickup a Zooplankton type food as well ( Oyster eggs or Golden Pearls). It seems that it has been able to capture some Cylopeeze as I could see the polyps close around it. Whether it will be able to ingest enough to sustain itself I do not know. I will probably try a combination of Zooplankton, Phytoplankton, and Cyclopeeze. I did not notice much reaction when I target fed the Phyto, for what it is worth.

Anyone else found success with a Blueberry ?

[Peter Eichler]

I know size of the polyps isn't always a good indicator, but I'd be pretty surprised if that Gorgonia wasn't able to eat cyclopeeze. But, diversity is good so in addition to the Golden Pearls rotifers might be another good choice. Also, I wouldn't bother much with the phytoplankton unless you're already using it with the purpose of feeding non anthozoans.

[J4Life]

You're right about the phyto Peter and polyp size as well. Howard if you're seeing it eat cyclopeeze then it should be able to eat daphnia as well which is also a very good source of nutrition. I would add that to the list. I think if you feed the Golden Pearls, daphnia, and cyclopeeze regularly you will probably have a very good chance of success with it. I personally don't target feed any of my corals however I feed once a day and heavy. I allow the pumps to blow it all around. The fish go nuts as well.

Good luck with it. I hope it fares really well for you.
Bill