Goniopora VS. Alveopora!!!

[shawnts106]

DUH, Alveopora, which is why I grabed one up today when it came into the store!!!... Fresh off the truck... its a beautiful nice large (about 5 inches long by about 3 inches wide)... georgous specimen!
it was 40$ so I had to grab it!
lol, so I have had 2 of these before, which did good in my tank, however I no longer have them do to 1) nitrates, need i say more!
and 2) a large 3.5 LB figi live rock decided it didnt want to stay where it was anymore!!!
sooooo, I decided to get another!
so does anyone have these wonderful corals in there aquarium??? anybody and have pictures?
just curious, when Mine blooms out good enough I will post a picture!

 

[nas19320]

I've seen some very nice ones buy never picked one up. What color is it? How many tentacles does it have per polyp? Good luck with it.

 

[mobikobeyob]

I had two gonis in the past, one green and one pink. The hurricanes took the pink one. here it is before Charlie.
RIP

Mobi

 

[jdm_ae86]

well, gl with it, hopefuly it survives..try buying an iron/manganese supplement after a week of it "doing good" and see how it does..it probably should make a difference..

 

[effloresce]

BTW
Gorgonias and Alveoporas are lagoonal species, meaning they are addapt (and actualy like) Platonic and dirty water, Nitrates wouldnt have killed it, it mgiht have helped it.
Hope this one works for you.

 

[shawnts106]

I've seen some very nice ones buy never picked one up. What color is it? How many tentacles does it have per polyp? Good luck with it.
It is metalic green and white with the rest of its tentacles being a purple color.... they have I do believe 12 tentacles per polyp.
well, gl with it, hopefuly it survives..try buying an iron/manganese supplement after a week of it "doing good" and see how it does..it probably should make a difference..
LOL, thanks, way ahead of you there, lol, Ive got the iron supplement... and I have it already in the water because of the refugium with the feather calupera!
Gorgonias and Alveoporas are lagoonal species, meaning they are addapt (and actualy like) Platonic and dirty water, Nitrates wouldnt have killed it, it mgiht have helped it.
Thank for the tip, and yes I do know that Gonies and Alveoporas (btw I think you mean Goniopora not gorgonias ) are lagoonal species, and I do know they love plankton, mainly phyto, these are the only 2 LPS corals known to have reasonable evidence that they do injest phytoplankton.... nowever I do not concider Planktonic water dirty water, it is by far from dirty, its very clean just filled with lots of food!
and I do not believe you are correct in the statement "Nitrates wouldnt have killed it, it mgiht have helped it."
Nitrates are Amonia and Nitrite byproducts, basically "leftovers" by saying this you are saying that Ammonia and Nitrite help the flowerpots as well!... which is by far from true, these species of coral require good water quality just as other corals do... and no Nitrates would not help a coral, no matter what species... it is a type of pollution, and as we all know pollution is not a good thing! haa haa!
I think everyone will agree with me on that statement! lol
thanks everyone!

 

[effloresce]

ammonia isnt good i agree, but the gonioporas absorv the trates, like clams do.

 

[effloresce]

And yes i meant Goni's sorry.
There are stupied shown that these corals do alot better in skimmerless tanks and high trate tanks. and also lower salinity.

 

[shawnts106]

There are stupied shown that these corals do alot better in skimmerless tanks and high trate tanks. and also lower salinity.
Unless you have hard scientific evidence to back this up, I do have a hard time believing it... I mean, in all my short 8 years of reef keeping, ive never through all my hundreds of hours of research and hard reading have EVER not once came across any article that tells about this!
and Lower salinity, maybe, just maybe, however, some of the alveoporas have been found out in the open ocean, near australia, so this Iduno, it could be possible!
I did check the salinity in the bag of this coral, it was like 1.019 or so, so that did surprise me!!!

 

[nas19320]

I too have read that Goni's and Alveopora seem to do better in tanks that are skimmerless or lightly skimmed. I read an article by Eric Borneman where he cited the high nutrient level of an unskimmed tank to be a possibility among many as to why a Goni that he had was thriving. Eric Borneman: "And, I have a long term Goniopora that was initially in a minimally skimmed system that has begun to grow rapidly now that it is in an unskimmed system."
Another excerpt by Terry Siegel.
"Now the bad news: My green Alveopora sp. which had doubled in size during the period when my nutrient level was too high for SPS corals is now showing signs of receding. This is not the first time I’ve observed a situation like this. Years ago, I had a flourishing Goniopora sp. that for several years was growing well, but went into a decline after I vastly improved skimming to make its reef tank more hospitable for SPS corals. This, of course raises a number of questions."

 

[nm reef]

"Thank for the tip, and yes I do know that Gonies and Alveoporas (btw I think you mean Goniopora not gorgonias ) are lagoonal species, and I do know they love plankton, mainly phyto, these are the only 2 LPS corals known to have reasonable evidence that they do injest phytoplankton.... nowever I do not concider Planktonic water dirty water, it is by far from dirty, its very clean just filled with lots of food!
and I do not believe you are correct in the statement "Nitrates wouldnt have killed it, it mgiht have helped it."
Nitrates are Amonia and Nitrite byproducts, basically "leftovers" by saying this you are saying that Ammonia and Nitrite help the flowerpots as well!... which is by far from true, these species of coral require good water quality just as other corals do... and no Nitrates would not help a coral, no matter what species... it is a type of pollution, and as we all know pollution is not a good thing! haa haa!
I think everyone will agree with me on that statement! lol"
shawnts106...That paste above is from one of your responses...and I'm sorry but I don't think everyone will "agree" with you. Bottom line is the vast majority of gonipora and/or alveopora corals do not survive long in aquariums and there has been extensive research done on why that is. I won't get into a --- for tat discussion on the issue but I will say that you obviously haven't researched this issue as well as you claim. The following quotes come from a very well put together article prepared by Rob Toonen....hopefully the bits of information will provide some solid and well researched info for you....
"Personally, I think that a disease does not make much sense given the typical pattern of decline reported by the vast majority of hobbyists (other than the obvious "brown jelly" problem over the short-term), and my guess for the standard "thriving for 4-6 months followed by decline and death around 1 year" pattern reported for these corals is starvation. The reports, like Julian's as well as that of Inland Aquatics (Morgan Lidster), in which the animals are doing well, are usually in a lagoonal setting, typically with a well-established sandbed, and lots of "refugium-type" fauna in the system. I have thought that feeding was the logical answer for a long time, and I think it explains my success with these coral and that of the other people to whom I have spoken that have observed growth and asexual reproduction in their corals."
"However, until now I have had nothing other than a gut feeling (and the same feeling of a bunch of other people like Eric Borneman and Morgan Lidster) to support my idea. That just changed, however -- I have recently been corresponding with Meredith Peach, and have gotten a copy of her unpublished thesis research on Goniopora (before she switched her field of research from coral biology to shark physiology). She published only 1 paper (on the structure and function of sweeper polyps in Goniopora) from her Masters Degree on the feeding and growth of Goniopora, but the rest of her research was even more fascinating (at least to me). She did a research project at One Tree Island in Australia and suggested that the corals may not be capable of supporting themselves on photosynthesis alone, and *worse* when deprived of food, she found that photosynthetic rate (as estimated from CN ratios of zooxanthellae) actually *dropped*. A similar effect has been found in several other coral species in which the translocation of nitrogen from the digestion of zooplankton prey by the coral leads to significant increases in the photosynthetic rate of the symbiotic zooxanthellae (host starvation resulted in decreased chl-a content, density & mitotic indices of zooxanthellae), but this makes the feeding all the more critical to the health and survival of the coral."
"Feeding attempts with newly hatched brine shrimp were unsuccessful, and despite repeated contact with the tentacles, these prey were far too large for the animals to actually ingest. In fact, repeated contact with the tentacles led to the tentacles retracting and therefore an end to feeding rather than the animals actually being fed. Gut content analyses of polyps excised from wild colonies revealed that the majority of the prey were microcrustaceans (copepods and their larvae, juvenile mysids, barnacle cyprids and such) but much of the diet appeared to consist of a mixture of phytoplankton and other tiny non-crustacean plankton (such as polychaete and mollusc larvae, ciliates, and rotifers) of the same size range. Turns out that phytoplankton was found in the guts of every animal examined and probably accounts for a significant proportion of the nutrient uptake by these corals, and was the only prey type that showed significant variation in capture rate by tidal regime or day versus night-time sampling."
"Given the results of Meredith's research, it is not surprising that the occasional reports we see for the maintenance and growth of these corals tend to be lagoonal or refugium-type systems with intense lighting and plenty of opportunity for the capture of tiny plankton and invertebrate larvae. It is also not surprising that a typical pattern of apparent health last for some months before the animal begins to show the signs of starvation (due to both deprivation of planktonic prey and the resultant decrease in photosynthetic ability) followed by a decline and eventually the death of the colony occurs in the majority of reef tanks (in which these type of prey are rarely provided in sufficient numbers). The animals do not need a lot of prey -- Meredith found that supplementing the feeding of wild colonies did not significantly increase growth rate, suggesting that the animals are not prey limited at natural feeding rates (roughly 50% of the polyps contained prey items of the sort outlined above at any given time), but decreasing the amount of prey captured obviously has a strong negative impact. These results explain the observation that adding declining animals to a well-stocked and highly productive deep sandbed system (such as Morgan's at IA) typically results in a complete recovery of the colony, because the renewed capture of phytoplankton and invertebrate larvae in addition to providing nutrition to the colony, in turn should lead to the increase of zooxanthellar output and both contribute the revival of the colony."

 

[nm reef]

In my opinion based on the posted experience of others and the research of individuals experienced in the field of marine species it seems that the vast majority of gonipora and/or alveopora species fail due to starvation in aquariums. Most information indicates the need for a system rich in nutrients and most research also indicates that in order to provide the proper conditions the aquarium is often not suitable for other species of coral. In other words the water quality needs to be so bad that other corals may not survive. Goniporas and alveoporas seem to require a lagoonal type set up that will sustain their diet needs and such a system is not conducive to most other coral species. In short...they require a system that is nutrient rich and even then they often appear to slowly starve even under the best of conditions.

Believe me....I have seen numerous claims of success with these type corals....but for every "claim" of success there have been far more reports of once thriving corals simply fading away and dieing......most appear to suffer a long/slow suffering death from lack of proper diet....they starve to death.....
...but then maybe you have discovered some hidden secret that no body else in the hobby has been able to discover.
best of luck to you and to your coral.
I sincerely wish your addition all the luck in the world.:thinking: :thinking: :thinking:

 

[effloresce]

:yes:
just say it, im right
and i meant "studies" not "stupied" it was late and i was tired and cold.

 

[shawnts106]

NMREEF:
WOW, I really dont know where to begin, which is unussual to me! LOL
um, lets start here:
Bottom line is the vast majority of gonipora and/or alveopora corals do not survive long in aquariums and there has been extensive research done on why that is.
Yes I am very aware of the research done on the Goniopora and Aleopora species of coral... Which is why I picked an Alveopora over a Goniopora, because the ALveopora species of flowerpots have a muc hardier reputation in captivity than that of the Gonioporas, and I am aware that there is a risk involved in this species.
and I'm sorry but I don't think everyone will "agree" with you.
I was referring to the statement I made about Nitrates and Ammonia being good for corals... thats all
I won't get into a --- for tat discussion on the issue but I will say that you obviously haven't researched this issue as well as you claim.
NMREEF: I am very surprized that you said this, !, yes I have researched goniopora and Alveopora corals extremly intensively!.... more than that of the "average joe" if you know what I mean! LOL
and I really didnt claim that I did much did I?
ive never through all my hundreds of hours of research and hard reading have EVER not once came across any article that tells about this!
well... ok yeah I did! LOL
A similar effect has been found in several other coral species in which the translocation of nitrogen from the digestion of zooplankton prey by the coral leads to significant increases in the photosynthetic rate of the symbiotic zooxanthellae (host starvation resulted in decreased chl-a content, density & mitotic indices of zooxanthellae), but this makes the feeding all the more critical to the health and survival of the coral."
That is extremly interesting!!!!!!! I never would have ever even thought of feeding the coral is like feeding its zooxanthellae, however after reading that its very obveious that that is true!!!
EXTREMLY INTERESTING!!!
Gut content analyses of polyps excised from wild colonies revealed that the majority of the prey were microcrustaceans (copepods and their larvae, juvenile mysids, barnacle cyprids and such) but much of the diet appeared to consist of a mixture of phytoplankton and other tiny non-crustacean plankton (such as polychaete and mollusc larvae, ciliates, and rotifers) of the same size range. Turns out that phytoplankton was found in the guts of every animal examined and probably accounts for a significant proportion of the nutrient uptake by these corals, and was the only prey type that showed significant variation in capture rate by tidal regime or day versus night-time sampling."
LOL, yes I know that article by HEART LOL!, that is why I am a FIRM believer in the direct feeding of phytoplankton to the Goniopora species, I have, since Ive been working at a LFS, been directly feeding a flowerpot (Goniopora S.) DT's Live Marine Phytoplankton, and after only 1 feeding Ive noticed a big improvement of how it looked, I duno, maybe it was the DT's or maybe it was just having a good day LOL! That shall come to figure out later!!
The animals do not need a lot of prey -- Meredith found that supplementing the feeding of wild colonies did not significantly increase growth rate, suggesting that the animals are not prey limited at natural feeding rates (roughly 50% of the polyps contained prey items of the sort outlined above at any given time), but decreasing the amount of prey captured obviously has a strong negative impact. These results explain the observation that adding declining animals to a well-stocked and highly productive deep sandbed system (such as Morgan's at IA) typically results in a complete recovery of the colony, because the renewed capture of phytoplankton and invertebrate larvae in addition to providing nutrition to the colony, in turn should lead to the increase of zooxanthellar output and both contribute the revival of the colony."
That blew me away!!!!!!!!!... I just wrote that I saw I difference in the way it looked.. and read the last part of that article!!!
WOW!, ok now we are getting somewhere!
Really though, thank you NMREEF for that article, extremly interesting!! really it is!
I believe out of all the people on this forum, you are the one that has taught me and several othe people the most! IMO!
I am getting some DT's tomorow, so, we will see if a direct feeding of DT's LIVE MARINE PHYTOPLANKTON helps the Alveopora I bought yesterday!
I am also adding IRON, which is also found in lagoons!
I am wanting to run an experiment in a 10 gallon aquarium, with about 3 WPG to 5 WPG in the Blue/White spectrums with a Goniopora species with NO filtration besides Live Rock and a good bit of water movement, and LARGE AMOUNTS of DT's Marine Phytoplankton, possible some larva of certain species of Inverts and some cocapods and some freeze dried Artimea, stuff like that.. so much that it clouds the water... Once I start this experiment I will post pictures and progression of this experiment... I do NOT know when I will be starting it though, so we will see about that
any advise once I do!?!?!
Thanks again to NMREEF!
...but then maybe you have discovered some hidden secret that no body else in the hobby has been able to discover.
LOL, :thinking: "if only if only, if only, ... iffff onnnlyyy!!!"

 

[effloresce]

I was referring to the statement I made about Nitrates and Ammonia being good for corals... thats all
but dont certain corals do better in certain conditions?
IE
Acroporas like High light and high flow while on the other hand if you had a frogspawn in high flow and high light it will most likely die from the huge ammounts of flow. and if you where to put an acro in low light and little to no flow it will die.
so whats the difference between a coral likeing high trates and one not?
plus i never said AMMONIA, i said NITRATES.

 

[shawnts106]

Yes you are right about corals liking different conditions, however I dont think that you completly understand what I meant by saying Ammonia,
Understand the Nitrate cycle, and how it gets there
Ammonia and Nitrite are broken down and the byproduct of that breaking down is Nitrate, therefore if you have Nitrates you have Ammonia and Nitrite as well.. without 1 you cant have the other... see what I mean?
just to let ya know

 

[effloresce]

yes you actualy can,
you cna have 10-25ppms of trates without .25 or ammonia or trites, the reason that is in the nitrogen cyclen dosesnt mean it is in every tank. in the cycle there is no bacteria, but after the cycle there is, the bacteria can easily take care of ammonia and trates before it builds up, yet they cant take care of trates as fast, every time a fish breaths, everytime you add food, everything is producing trates all at once.
make a thread on asking who all has trates, then ask who all has ammonia, only the ones cycling will, or the ones with bad husbandry or a bad clean up crew.....

 

[shawnts106]

make a thread on asking who all has trates, then ask who all has ammonia, only the ones cycling will, or the ones with bad husbandry or a bad clean up crew.....
LOL, I would be included! HAHA
well, you still have to have some ammonia, you said so yourself!
you cna have 10-25ppms of trates without .25 or ammonia or trites,
my point... exactly