New Flower Pot (Gonoipora)

Picked this up today at the LFS for $14.99. A couple polyps have begun to come out.


One of my Peppermint Shrimp checking things out;D

 

Hey! Congratulations! It looks you have picked up Goniopora stokesi! They are nice, but demanding! My goniopora is 12" in diameter It eats a lot!

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Thanks. What and how do you feed it? The guy at the store said it is pretty hardy.

 

pretty coral, best of luck though their a really high maintenance coral not easy to keep, as said above requires lots of feedings and good quality water

My nickname for these "gone i poor ah"

 

We were already having some discussions, let me just copy/paste pieces of previous discussion.

First of all, please read the following article: Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine - Feature Article: The Successful Aquarium Culture of Goniopora Species
It should help you with identification of your specimen, and provide detailed info about light/flow/feeding requirement. Moreover, please refer to the source papers cited by the author of this article. You will learn from them that Goniopora thrives in nutrient rich/shallow waters. Consequently, one of the very important requirements is feeding! My Goniopora has been grown from a 2" frag, it's actually 2 years old and now it's around 12-13" in diameter!. I have placed it in my tank 1.5 months ago! As you have probably read from my posts, I do skim my water quite intensively! Moreover, I run very efficient nitrate reactor. My water is definitely not nutrient rich (as defined by nitrate/phosphate content)! Moreover, my tank is simply to young to have natural population of a quality zooplankton.
To compensate for almost sterile water conditions I'm dosing Trace Elements and Reef Plus (by Seachem) (aminoacids + vitamin extracts) two times per week (it's fully automated). On top of that, my Goniopora stokesi is fed after MH go off with ~5ml of high quality frozen cyclops! I also want to mention very important requirement -> stable levels of Ca/Mg/Trace elements. I've developed this feeding/nutrition protocol after numerous discussions with friend from LFS who has been far more than successful with Goniopora stokesi. He has got like 4 simply gargatuan specimens (at least 15" in diameter)!

K+ for that one Iraf

 

Thanks for information. I can't imagine what one 15" looks like

It is starting to open up now so that is good.

 

I had one for about 9 months very hard to care for. I would take frozen cyclopes and some brine shrimp mash them together and target feed as many polyps as you can.you have to get a eyedropper and when you feed it don't blow to hard on the polyp or it will close up and not take the food.I was feeding mine every third day.
unfortunately I had a long battle with brown jelly on it that killed more then half the polyps on it then it never recovered.
it was cool to watch because when you start feeding the polyps they will bend over a grab the food from the other polyps.

 

pretty hard to keeep if u can thats awesome because they are really cool

i had mine for a about 6 months then it just started going down hill

 

Ours has lasted about 9 months so far, and it's still doing great under PC lights.

A untouched pic:

And a fun pic: