I appreciate your insight and advice. Personally, I would not consider the long tentacled, large polyped typical Goniopora as they definately are "impossible" to keep long term, but these short tentacled, small polyped Gonioporas are rumoured to have much better long term survival rates. How long have you had yours?

I have had mine for one year.
I do not know whether these are easier than the large polyped types.

Hey PM me with how much he wants for the nice red Goniopora you "found", maybe I could buy a frag of it from you?

Mark

Mark: Bayside corals has two of these red gonioporas, and some bright green ones too. I don't know if you noticed he fragged the green one up? If I do decide to get one I don't think I will be fragging it anytime soon, as I like to have bigger colonies. :) Oh, and my tanks won't be here in Saskatoon for probably a couple months yet. I will take whatever corals I buy tomorrow back to Kelowna with me on Tuesday.

I would say one year is the "long term" mark in my opinion as far as difficult to keep corals go. Does it grow well? Is it well colored? 2-3 times a day target feeding is pretty aggressive...I imagine if yours is not top notch with a regime like that, there is little hope!

All my research points towards the smaller polyped Gonioporas having better survival rates than their large polyped "cousins", but I am yet to be convinced.

You need to be careful as I understand they ship poorly. When I received it it did nothing for about 10 days and than opened up.
I would say the best shape it was in was about 5 months ago. Really colourful and perfect looking. Right now it is so so but not declining. I think it all has to do with feeding once the current and the lighting suits them.
I am not recommending anyone get them though but simply answering your questions.

I have the same goniopora as Corpusse and I've had it about 10 months or so (3 months after end of cycle). Its doing fine and in MHO looks much nicer than the short encrusting ones, especially under actinics or just moon lights. The coral base glows like magna. Simply gorgeous!

What constitutes "hard to keep"?
I would not discourage anyone from getting one of these. Just my opinion based on my experience.

ive got a green goniopora, it was a small frag when i bought it 6-7 months ago, maybe a little longer actually, its now a good foot across and 8-9 inches high when its fully out.

its not red but i think they basically have the same needs, heres a pic when its 75% out

http://i534.photobucket.com/albums/e...531dec0003.jpg

The typical Goniporas with the large tentacles and large polyps (like yours) come from turbid lagoons where there is a huge amount of nutrients in the water. These Gonioporas are notoriously difficult if not impossible to keep long term (like a few other corals like non-photosynthetic gorgonians) as they require such a large amount of food that isn't normally available in our tanks because of protein skimming. There are not many foods on the market that are the right particle size Goniopora (unlike a few years ago), but one often ends up polluting his tank trying to feed these corals enough.

The short tentacled, small polyped Goniopora statchburyi and burgosi (in particular) both come from waters that are much less turbid, and less nutrient laden, so are supposedly much easier to care for as they apparently are not as nutrient demanding as their cousins.

My red gonioporah has tentacles at least 2.5 inch some times 3 inch.
Long enough for Percula clown to host in it.
I only feed once a day and i do not target feed anything in my tank.
May be it feeds on clowns excrement i don't know LOL.
Considering that it produced two offspings i think its doing well .

Your Goniopora is not either of the species I am referring to, but I am still interested how long you have had yours?