blueberry gorgonian tips??

[reefwars]

anyone keeping one healthy or long term?? anything your doing special??

[fishytime]

I tried one before.....it lasted a few months......from what I gather.....feed phyto-esque foods heavily and tonnes of flow......anything that gets caught in them, ie. algae, must be removed immediately....the tissue damages rather easily and can open them up to trouble

[reefwars]

I tried one before.....it lasted a few months......from what I gather.....feed phyto-esque foods heavily and tonnes of flow......anything that get cought in them, ie. algae, must be removed immediately....the tissue damages rather easily and can open them up to trouble



that was the the same as my purple frilly one as well if it never got enough flow it would get algae. ive had the frag for almost a week now for the first couple of days the polyps would just kinda show you could see the ends of the tips, now they are out most the time.

im trying to see what i want to get to feed it right now i get a feeding response using fauna marin ultra clam just not sure if its anygood longterm although longterm isnt very much heard of.


now that its showing polyps im gonna move it in a couple days off the shelf and into the shade .

[reefwars]

heres a pic of it now, the frag had some ends that were exposed on 2 branches so once it finishes acclimatizing to my tank ill trim them back.i can start to see blue in the stem as opposed to the brown its been:P


http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad85/reefwars/90gallon%20reef/042-1.jpg?t=1333078210

[bkelly]

i picked up one a bit ago too , sure are neat. It came very healthy i think it was in a higher nitrate system its suffered with me , fell into my anem a couple times but got it now in my frag tank maybe to stay as i fear my display tangs/angels will go to town on it. I been trying the Fauna ultra sea fan powder. hope it pulls through.

[daniella3d]

Impossible. Nobody has ever managed to keep those more than a few months, not even those with dedicated non-photosynthetic tank with constant feeding system.

First we don't know exactly what it is eating but it is not eating phyto, more likely rich water with zooplankton in it.

And second, it grow in deep water so the warm water in our tank is very detrimental to it. Most probably it would need water at temperature of around 60F to 65F and only blue light so no algae can grow on it. It live is deep water with very rich cool water from the deep.

It is probably the hardest to keep non-photosynthetic coral.

I managed to keep one for about 4 months feeding it 10 to 12 times a day with fauna marin ultraseafan, ultramin, reefroid, coral frenzy, oyster eggs, rotifeast, you name it. Yet it died never mind what I did.

Mine even regrew the flesh at the base that was damaged but it still died anyway.

[reefwars]

very difficult but i wouldnt say impossible , there are people on the nps section of rc that are having success granted its not 10 years but its better then a month or 2:P



tonight it gets its "permanent....if im lucky enogh to call it that" spot in my tank and off the shelf as i fear film algae will get it if i dont, so its going down with my suncorals in the dark.



the polyps are getting bigger with each day in my tank, when i recieved the frag some of the ends were stripped down to the root so im gonna cut it back and see if it heals:P

[naesco]

Impossible, unless you feed phytoplankton to the point that the water constantly has a greenish tinge to it
This is one species that should not be imported because they end up dying in reefers tanks.

[sumpfinfishe]

Impossible, unless you feed phytoplankton to the point that the water constantly has a greenish tinge to it
This is one species that should not be imported because they end up dying in reefers tanks.

a perfect reply to this thread!

[daniella3d]

Sure, dream on :)

Unless you have a dedicated NP tank with constant feeding it is impossible to keep beside a few months. Even if you have a NP tank with dedicated feeding it won't thrive, it will just maybe survive.

Never heard of anyone keeping it more than 2 years.

Do you even have a NP tank with constant feeding? if you do then you cen keep it for a while if you don't then how can you even expect to keep it long term? impossible.


very difficult but i wouldnt say impossible , there are people on the nps section of rc that are having success granted its not 10 years but its better then a month or 2:P



tonight it gets its "permanent....if im lucky enogh to call it that" spot in my tank and off the shelf as i fear film algae will get it if i dont, so its going down with my suncorals in the dark.



the polyps are getting bigger with each day in my tank, when i recieved the frag some of the ends were stripped down to the root so im gonna cut it back and see if it heals:P

[Jaws]

I just stumbled across this thread while doing a random search for phytoplankton but I wonder if there's any hope for this coral if it was removed from the display tank, how often I'm not sure, and maybe floated upside down or placed in a phytoplankton culture for a period of time? I've seen this coral respond to nutrients very well whenever food is added to a tank so I wonder how it would respond in this environment. I've heard of sun corals responding well to this method too but they're not as easily removed from the tank as a gorgonian would be. Again, not sure it would make a lot of sense if you had to do it daily but maybe a concentrated culture would be enought to keep it healthy if it responded once or twice a week. Any open minded opinions on this? ;)

[reefwars]

Mine is still alive it takes cyclopeeze but is fed mostly fauna Marin sea fan and ultra clam.it hasn't grown any and didn't like acclimating to my tank had thought I was gonna lose it but its alive Ans well:):)

[PFoster]

I kept mine for around a year and it was perfectly healthy and growing. I finally lost it in the move to TO.
Right up to the day of the move, mine always had 100% polyps extention and the nice thick, healthy orange flesh across all of the woody base.

That being said, these are impossible to keep unless they are on a dedicated azoox system.
We even did a test and brought in 6 new blueberrys that I purchased directly from the divers in Indo and shipped back to Can right away, so that they did not sit for long in holding tanks there (once nps gorgs stop eating they often will not start eating again).
We put 3 blueberry in our dedicated azoox tank and 3 into one of our corals beds.
The azoox system had a fridge below it and was fed hourly with a Fauna Marin dosing pump. This tank overflowed into my sps tank.

The other three were placed in the sps tank. So technically all the food that overflowed from the azoox tank went to the sps tank. But the sps tank had a low food density and the azoox system had a high food density.

Within 6 weeks the 3 blueberry in the sps tank were receedind, the three in the azoox system were doing just fine.

There are definately a few details that are absolutely essential for success with this sp. Believe me when I say that we did not have instant success with the blueberry gorgs....
1) water quality
in order to keep 99% of all azoox corals you need absolutely prestine water quality. I have heard people say "you need dirty water for those" but nothing could be further from the truth.
You need low doc's, high redox and zero tannins in the water.

2) feeding frequency
Different azoox have different feeding requirements in terms frequency. Some do ok with 3 times a day. The blueberry gorg is not one of these pieces. It should be fed hourly via a dosing pump. All other attempts are destined to fail eventually IMO.

3) Foods
I fed mine Reef Nutrition Oyster eggs, Fauna Marin clam, minF, seafan and MinD. I have details blogs on here and other forums for my setup and i dont mind sharing the info if people are interested.
Other combos may work for other people but this is all I fed and it worked amazing for me.

The trickiest thing here is the continual feeding and prestine water quality. Those two things are basically polar opposites...

IMO its MUCH easier to tie a smaller, dedicated azoox system into and sps system with an decent sized skimmer. If you have nicely colored sps they you are probably already aware of how to keep tannins down (carbon, ozone, zeolite media, wc's etc), po4 is probably already at zero, and you have no algae issues. As long as your skimmer is slightly oversized, an azoox system will also serve to feed your sps.
This is a major key to success.

I have kept a stand alone azoox system and even with my level of enthusiasm for the hobby, its just too much work for me to keep the water quality high enough....


I will shortly be setting up another azoox system, this time it will be a 144g half cylinder though :)

[PFoster]

everyone loves pictures so here is one for you....

This was the bar fridge I modified and installed under my azoox tank:
http://reefwholesale.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=4291&g2_serialNumber=1

Originally i used an inverted pop bottle for the coral foods with a small bubbler to keep the foods mixing but this didnt work too well.

I purchased a magnetic stirer later which worked much better.

This tank was setup before the MP10Wes were released to give you an idea of time frames for when I first setup the tank.

[PFoster]

that was the the same as my purple frilly one as well if it never got enough flow it would get algae.

Are you refering to the purple frilly gorgs from the caribbean?

[reefwars]

Are you refering to the purple frilly gorgs from the caribbean?


i believe so here is a pic i dont have it anymore this was a few years ago pretty easy gorg to keep, i bought it as a "purple frilly" there are still frags alive i cut going around. phosphates were doing me a bad battle at the time with a skimmerless tank....this is also when i first started gfo for the first time....now i use it for every set-up:)


http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad85/reefwars/little%2033/024-4.jpg?t=1290118621

[reefwars]

everyone loves pictures so here is one for you....

This was the bar fridge I modified and installed under my azoox tank:
http://reefwholesale.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=4291&g2_serialNumber=1

Originally i used an inverted pop bottle for the coral foods with a small bubbler to keep the foods mixing but this didnt work too well.

I purchased a magnetic stirer later which worked much better.

This tank was setup before the MP10Wes were released to give you an idea of time frames for when I first setup the tank.

ive read your complete build thread on another forumn i gotta say i could read it a thousand times very interesting:)

[PFoster]

Much appreciated.
I wish I was a bit better at updating my build/progress threads but Maybe I will be better at this next one :)

Phosban and cardon are a must for gorgs thats for sure but its good that you are using them now.

I really do think a dosing pump is necessary to keep the blueberry gorgs. You only really need a single pumps unit.
I put the three pump on there as originally I had intended to use live phyto, FM and oyster eggs each on their own pump.
But I rarely dosed the live phyto and the Faurna and oyster eggs could be combined in the same mixture.