hey viper,look what i have!!

[fishieness]

hello everyone
Viper: if you remember, a while ago you posted a thread with dendros, balanos, and duncans. i had been looking for all of the species for quite some time. well, i asked my LFS once i found out ORA has some (same company yours is from right?) and they ordered some!! i picked it up yesterday :joy:
PS: sorry, i know it is a crappy pic..... ill get a good one at some point

 

[viper_930]

Nice score! Feed it every day and it'll grow like mad.
Yep, mine was originally from ORA also.
Here's a pic of my colony...

 

[viper_930]

Just kiddin', I can only wish.

That's one of ORA's mother colony, their biggest one I believe. They got their first frag from Julian Sprung over ten years ago and now it's as big as a football.

 

[fishieness]

hahaha
i do hear that they grow pretty fast though if fed often. ive tried feeding mine like 3 times already but my clean up crew is too fast

but i found a clean plastic cup and a small piece of live rock to put on top to fix that

 

[sacfishguy]

is that the same as a whisker coral? if so i got one a a coral farmers market with only one head, now it has around 8-9 heads. just wanted to see if they were the same. here is a pic of mine

 

[fishieness]

yup. same thing
how long have you head yours sacfish? how often do you feed it?
i have one hermit that is known in my tank for eating every peice of food right out of my corals. when i fed them today and put the plastic cup with the rock on top, within minutes, he was trying to dig his way under. so i put him behind my rockwork on the other side of the tank and leave. now that i am home 3 hours later, he is back there digging

maybe ill put him in one of my fowlrs....

 

[greymach]

cool

 

[sacfishguy]

i've had mine about 5 months and i feed usually every other day. what do you feed your? i try to feed mine artic pods if the fish wil leave them alone :happyfish

 

[fishieness]

wow!!! 1-8or9 in about 5 months?!! that is fantastic growth. then again, with so many feedings, i would expect it

i have been feeding mine krill. but it seems that their mouths are really small so it takes a long time to ingest it. which gives my clean up crew more time to steal it (although it will only take them a minut or two anyways) so i think i am going to start feeding something smaller likie cyclopse eeze, mysis, or any other frozen food

 

[viper_930]

I also got mine from the corals farmers market too, so all three of ours were originally grown by ORA. Yep, they're also known as whiskers coral, though they're scientific name is more well-known. I thought you had gotten a bigger piece though, sacfishguy? Did you frag it?
I got 8 polyps from there on June 25th and it's grown about 18-20 additional polyps since then. I've fragged it a couple times though, so my colony is probably less than 14 right now.
I feed mine mysis shrimp. Don't feed it pieces too big. It may ingest them, but at night after lights out it'll just spit it all back out. Better to feed it more small pieces than fewer larger pieces. I feed mine the frozen mysis by Hikari. Anything bigger than that and they would reject.

 

[sacfishguy]

when i got it. it was tiny only, 1 polyp. how do you frag this type of coral?

 

[viper_930]

I just use a dremel with a diamond wheel. If you grow it out long enough it'll start to branch and the branches can easily be cut off.
But if you go frag happy like me, it'll stay in one massive thick colony. The coralites are so close together it's hard to frag some polyps without hurting others. It's skeleton is very soft and easy to cut through though, maybe even too easy. The edges of the coralites have a tendency to crack.

 

[nm reef]

Very interesting coral indeed. If I every regain control of my system (and eventually I will) I intend to purchase a ORA frag myself...

For anybody interested here is some basic info:
Captive care
Lighting
Low to medium ligting consistant with its normal habitat. Borneman (2001) states they are adaptable to most lighting conditions.
Water flow
Gentle currents (Borneman, 2001).
Feeding
Should be fed regularly on any fleshy marine foods (Borneman, 2001). Choose food items that can fit into the mouth which expands from its normal resting size.
I'd think cyclopeeze wouldbe a good food selection.

 

[lbaskball]

Originally Posted by ViPeR_930
Nice score! Feed it every day and it'll grow like mad.
Yep, mine was originally from ORA also.
Here's a pic of my colony...

Is this a fire coral? It looks the same.

 

[fishieness]

never heard it called a fire coral... but possible i supose...
thanks for the idea to feed mysis viper. they swallowed it in about 1/10th the time.

i cant wait until these suckers grow. ill definatly be feeding them as often as my fish

 

[viper_930]

I've heard dendrophyllia called firecracker corals, but these are different. Dendros and duncans are in the same family though.
fishieness, post another pic in a month or two to see how much it grew!

 

[jeffy1833]

Does SWF carry this and what is it called please?

 

[viper_930]

No, they don't carry it here. It's pretty rare and there's very few places that have it and sell out quickly.
It's called Duncanopsammia axifuga, aka whiskers coral.

 

[jeffy1833]

Thanks I'm thinking about getting some coral and I don't want to go crazy on the lights yet. I'm just making a list as of now.

 

[blitz99]

100 bucks a polyp or cheaper??? curious as to what people are paying outside of michigan on these... my LFS (one of them) has a 7 polyp "frag" for 550... i laughed.