how do i keep a goniopora alive?

[nickerber]

I found out recently I have a goniopora, a green one at that. The LFS guy told me it was elegance coral. Lesson learned....

Now I am the proud owner of this apparently doomed coral. Everything I've read on them is that they are nearly impossible to keep alive in a reef aquarium. I'm looking for any pointers.....

Currently I have a 55 gallon with a sump/fuge. For lights I have 2 54w actinics, 2 54w 10K, and moonlights with 1 blue/white LED stunner with 0.5w LEDs. Yesterday I programmed the lights to work on a dawn/dusk cycle that lasts 10 hours and a daylight cycle in the middle for 8 hours. I have 2 Koralia 550s at each end of the tank. Soon (later this week) I will have 1 Vortec 40w wavemaker pump installed. I only have a few other corals (candycane trumpet, 2 mushrooms) and some fish, including a yellow tang, pajama cardinals, striped damsel, 2 clownfish, a coral banded shrimp, and a copperband butterfly.

The status of the gonio: I've had it for a few months. At first it loved being in the tank on the sand floor. It would draw in all its tentacles every night and come out every day. This lasted about 2 weeks and ever since then it has been withdrawn and balled up. I even found it "inflated" one time (I don't know how else to describe it).

Parameters:
Salinity around 1.023
pH around 8.2-8.3
consistently high nitrates

I've been dosing Instant Ocean Reef Supplement and Marine Snow daily. I put the gonio within inches of the top of the water and increased the temp to run 80.2-80.4. The tentacles seem to be peeking out again, which I think is a good sign. I would welcome any feedback or advice on this.

 

[Bifferwine]

Your lights are suitable for the coral, but what does high nitrates mean? How high? I think in order to ensure success with these corals, they must be target fed every other day or so. I had the best luck with them feeding frozen Cyclopeeze. They are very slow feeders, so just squirting them with food isn't good enough. A good trick is to take a 2 liter soda bottle and cut off the bottom. Place the bottle over the coral at feeding time, and squirt the Cyclopeeze in the top of the bottle, then put the cap on. The Cyclopeeze and the coral will be trapped in the bottle together, and it can take its sweet time eating without being bothered by flow or other animals.

You are right that their survival rates are very low. If yours is not extending its polyps anymore, you won't be able to feed it. It would have had a better shot had it been fed from the beginning, so it may be too late now that it's been in there unfed for several months. I hope you can help it recover -- if it does extend its polyps again, take that time to make sure it gets some food. I think the planktonic food you are using is too small for it, so give Cyclopeeze or something similar a shot. Good luck!

 

[nickerber]

I have struggled with high nitrates for a while. like off the charts high - the API test tube is usually blood red (sorry for the gruesome description). I've stepped up water changes but I think I have too little water flow and for quite a while I did neglect water changes. I'm using Instant Ocean nitrate reducer, I'm going to get that AquaMaxx bio-media, and I'm adding ChemiPure Elite today in a TLF reactor.

That's a great idea to feed it. I went out and got CyclopEeze yesterday and target fed it last night and today. The polyps have been out the last couple days. It's only been a couple months with it and for the first month all the polyps were out and it seemed to love the tank.

What do you think about the "inflated" thing it did? It looked like all the polyp "stalks" had increased in diameter instead of length and there was a balloon of tissue surrounding the calcium ball in the middle. It looked like some weird science thing.

 

[RockStacker]

If your nitrate test kit is in the "red" color range then only a serious regimen of water changes would be the only way to get nitrates back in check.
At this stage, even your "nitrate reducers" will not be able to keep up.

 

[nickerber]

I started with a 20% change yesterday. Today I tested again and the results looked like this:

pH 8.2 or 8.4
Amm 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrates ~40-80
Temp 80.8
Sal 1.024
Ca ~460

I was thinking of 10% again in a couple days and then 10% until they get back down.

Tomorrow I will have a better pump that should stir up more of the gunk on rocks and sand bottom to get this under control - a Vortec 40wES. I tried target feeding it today with CylcopEeze, it didn't seem to open up much.

 

[Bifferwine]

I would be doing more than 10% water changes. With nitrates at 40, a 10% water change can be expected to drop them by 4 -- so it will be at 36 then. Not much of a difference. Those nitrates are VERY high and I'm surprised they haven't impacted your other corals or inverts yet. I'd bump up the water changes to 30% or so until you get them under control.

 

[nickerber]

Thanks Biffer, I'll start doing those. How often should I do a 30%? I thought too many water changes was bad?

 

[Bifferwine]

Too many water changes is bad. But nitrates at 80 is even worse! :)

I would do them once or twice a week to start, and see how that impacts your numbers. You won't have to keep it up forever -- after a few weeks, your levels should drop enough that you will be able to get by with the standard 10% to 20% a week from then on out.

 

[nickerber]

That makes sense - cost-benefit analysis... :) I'll start doing that to see what I can get them down to. After the first cycle everything was 0, but then I got lazy with water changes and up they went. I could kick myself for that.

 

[Bifferwine]

It happens. With one of my old tanks, my nitrates got up to 150+. For the same reason -- got lazy with water changes. You live and you learn! I had to deal with the aftermath of terrible algae outbreaks, and I learned my lesson. :lol:

 

[charmon09]

the best way to handle a NO3 problem is to fix the problem. like bifferwine said everyone gets lazy with water changes. when i started i had high nitrate problems too. lots of hair algae and unhealthy corals. bio pellets in a cheap reactor and a quality skimmer should clear up your problems in a few months.