Success with non-photosynthetics
 

I've done a fair bit of research and brain picking about them, and finally decided to give one a try. My new coral is an Acabaria sp. sea fan, which is claimed to eat zoo and phytoplankton, marine snow and fish waste. I was told that reef roids are a good thing to feed it. Can anyone tell me if this is true or not?

I'm curious to see who has had success in keeping non-photosynthetic corals? Please tell me about your success or lack of. Please tell me about your tank as far as flow, feeding and other relevant info that might help me out.

:biggrin:Danny

I used to keep 4 sea fans, all non photo. that was in my old tank, i was feeding them, the kent phyto, zoomax and chromamax. all with a full dropper of food. they were all encrusting and growing.
I was also doing a water change of 4gallons every night.

Check out some of the non-photosynthetic tanks on the Zeo forums. People are having a lot of success using Zeo and Fauna Marin additives. The trouble is feeding a non-photosynthetic enough that it will thrive without polluting your tank. Most successful non-photosynthetic keepers have dedicated systems. That's something I would REALLY like to do one day.

Think the only real way to get away with it is with a drip 24x7. Convert an old kalkwasser stirrer into a drip feeder basically.

That is hard work !

oh, i just thought of it, there is a great article and pictures of a non-photo reef in the new coral magazine, the tank is INSANE. It has 20-25 colonies of suncorals, detros, fans, whips, everything. The corals and colors are out of this world.

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Does one sea fan really need to be fed that much though? I guess its a good thing my skimmer is oversized. Tony, good idea with the drip thing. I'll have to do some trial and error tests to see what I can come up with. the wheels are already turning.

What about flow though? What are people running for current in their tank?

Danny an oversized skimmer is counter-productive to overfeeding phyto as the skimmer will remove the phyto unless you shut off your skimmer for fairly long periods of time.

Yes. That is because there needs to be a certain concentration in the water column in order for the coral is be able to get enough food out of it. It is very difficult to keep non-photos in a mixed reef. I attempted the same as you awhile back, and target fed the sea fan daily. I managed to pollute the tank real well, and the sea fan still died. :neutral:

Here's one of the nicest non-photo tanks I've ever seen: http://www.zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16186
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/7413/13557221ar6.jpg

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Well, I've brought the coral home with me so I'm going to make the best of it. It appears to open up and eat when I add the Reef Roids to the tank, which I'll take as a good sign.

Can you please post a pic of your new seafan? Where did you find it?

Your sea fan should be open and feeding constantly, ideally. Hopefully this works out for you... can't wait to see pics!

Wow is that ever fantastic. I see a coral in those pictures I have! I thought it was random leather I picked up scavenging an LFS display tank but I see now it is clearly a Dendronephthea / Carnation coral. I'm going to have a closer look tonight.

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It opens up a few times a day, which is when I feed it. I have tried feeding it before it opens up, and sometimes it follows suit promptly while other times it doesn't. So far there are of signs of decay on the sea fan except where it was touching my candy coral for a while.

Snaz - How long have you had your Carnation coral? I would say they are much harder to keep than my sea fan.

Sharuq1 - I'll post pics shortly.

naesco - I've started to shut off the skimmer while feeding, just so that the planktons stay suspended longer. I've also begun stirring up the detritus in my sump at the same times as feeding to add a little variety to my coral's diet.:mrgreen: So far, I've noticed an increase in skimmate. I haven't noticed any difference in the growth of my refugium macros yet, but I'll assume that I'll notice that soon enough. I also run GFO and NO3 spong in a reactor so I'm not yet worried about fouling up the tank.

So far I think all of the corals are loving the additional food I've been putting in the tank.

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http://www.canreef.com/photopost/dat...m/IMGP3528.JPG

http://www.canreef.com/photopost/dat...m/IMGP3527.JPG

WOW, what a nice piece. It looks HUGE

That is a beautiful sea fan... I've seen similar ones that are photosynthetic, but they tend to be yellow or purple, not that gorgeous burgundy that you have.

If it's opening a few times a day, that should be good enough... I don't know anyone that's had many nonphotosynthetic gorgonians. If you notice any bad decay, I've heard that it can travel down the stalk and kill the whole piece. I would trim off any decaying or dead parts, maybe take a small frag and put it in a different position in the tank just in case you lose the mother colony.

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Good idea. Also because there may be more favourable flow in a different part of the tank. The fan is quite large for my tank right now, but I will be upgrading soon to a larger cubish shaped tank.

Magnificent sea fan!

That variety you are supposed to keep out of light as much as possible. Algae can start growing on it making it very difficult for it to survive, I was only able to keep one of those alive for a couple months.

Very nice! I wish you success with it. :)

Oh yeah, I forgot about that... some of these can shed their outer skin, and any algae or encrusting organisms with it, and will do so every so often. But I think I'll agree with Drock on this, I would shade it so it doesn't get overtaken (which I understand can happen quite easily with these).

I'm hoping you have some success with this, it is absolutely gorgeous... and perhaps I'll learn something for when I get a gorg, though it will likely be photosynthetic... but learning new things is good!

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I've wondered about that to tell you the truth. My yellow tang and flame angel have both been spotted picking off of it. No flesh is missing so it's probably diatoms.