roger Posted September 29, 2002 Share Posted September 29, 2002 I know that there are hard to keep corals like acropora. I think that one you will need metal halides right? What other corals are difficult and what are easy? Hope to hear from the experts here like Spiff and Achilles and Hong... many more! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SRC Member hongqixian Posted September 29, 2002 SRC Member Share Posted September 29, 2002 I know that there are hard to keep corals like acropora. I think that one you will need metal halides right? What other corals are difficult and what are easy? Hope to hear from the experts here like Spiff and Achilles and Hong... many more! Expert?!!! You flatter me Most of what I know I've never tried....yet Anyway I'll try my best to help... Ranking top on the toughness list is Goniopora- Flowerpot coral. It looks healthy at the LFS and stays healthy for a few months in your tank...then shrinks slowly and opens less everyday. Until it hardly opens at all and dies. Goniopora will accept very few commercial coral foods..none at all I think. Some of them somehow can cause it more harm...read it in an article somewhere. Gonio thrives in warm, nutrient-rich and silty environment in the wild. It would also probably feed on large amts of plankton and need high amts of sunlight to penetrate the silty water... There are many hypothesises(where's my grammar!) on why it is so hard to maintain in captivity, some say pathogens, but I think starving is most likely. Cataphyllia (Elegance) has become surprisingly hard to maintain recently according to westerners. Maybe it's because it's popularity as an "easy-to-maintain" coral in the past(aquarium books!) have led to the collection of most of the cataphyllia in shallow waters and then more deeper water ones have been collected (from what I've heard) These might require diff conditions(my opinion) Next perhaps is tubastrea. It will not do well unless you provide it with large amts. of food or bother to feed it daily otherwise it is fairly easy to care for. Be careful when handling it, you can easily press too hard and press the flesh into the skeleton. At the moment this is all I can think of.... Surprisingly acropora is pretty easy to keep if you have proper lighting and good flow...all you need is the $$$. Check out www.garf.org , pretty good SPS propogation info and great pics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SRC Member hongqixian Posted September 29, 2002 SRC Member Share Posted September 29, 2002 Oh, err, I think dendronepthya is pretty hard to keep too. Don't confuse it with the other sclero- and whatever other nepthea corals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Achilles Tang Posted September 29, 2002 Share Posted September 29, 2002 Wow! Hong, you're pretty well-read for a young man... well done, well done indeed! I see a budding marine biologist in you! Heh! Top of the list are the dendronephythya and some scleronephythya species (frequently called carnation corals or cauliflower soft corals), which are non-photosynthetic filter feeders. You'll need to frequently feed it phytoplankton EVERYDAY to keep it alive (but even that is not a guarantee) and maintain good water quality. They are normally kept upside down as in nature they would be found under ledges and overhangs... out of light and they do need a lot of current to bring them planktonic food, preferably by surge... For the aquarist who don't have the discipline or the means to provide tiny plankton on a daily basis... you can expect this coral to last for not more than a few days or a couple of weeks max before they start dying... shrinking every day before collapsing into a pile of mush and little spines.. and could potentially affect your tank as they are known to have chemical defenses against other corals. They are in my opinion, one of the most beautiful soft corals in the world (they come in orange, pink, red, yellow, purple.... really amazing to see them in huge garden like patches when I go diving!) but in the history of reef-keeping... the most impossible to keep. So... don't buy a carnation or cauliflower coral. It's a waste of your money for a few days of admiring a rapidly shrinking mush.... If you see a LFS bringing in HUGE quantities, tell them not to bother ordering them... as people who buy them will never sustain them... not even the LFS themselves). Achilles... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Achilles Tang Posted September 29, 2002 Share Posted September 29, 2002 2nd on the top of the list of hard to keep corals are the genus Goniopora (flowerpot coral). They are imported in huge quantities by the LFS and with their attractive polyps coming out from their round football-like stony skeleton, looking like a Medusa (mythical woman with snakes for hair) and being relatively cheap...Gonios are commonly bought. They last for up to 6 months before mysteriously dying. First you will see the polyps retract and then you see brown patches and tissue decay... and before long, you have a round football in your sandbed... all covered in nuisance algae! They are believed to perish due to slow starvation before usually succumbing to brown jelly infection. In my dives, I can see them waving around happily in murky sandy bottoms. I will post a shot in the underwater photography section... They seem to thrive in such environments where the sediments and DOM (dissolved organic matter) are very high... such conditions are unrealistic in our home aquariums as other coral species, especially acropora, will perish quickly. Their main diet is phytoplankton and very small zooplankton and aquarists who provide these foods can see them lasting from one year upwards... I used to have a beautiful red goniopora... it lasted almost a year before it perished slowly... and back then I wasn't feeding much planktonic food. If you *MUST* buy a goni, do what you can to feed this species with suitable foods, or keep a 'dirty' tank where they can survive... heh! If you can't, don't buy them. Leave them in the sea for others to appreciate! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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