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Show us your hard to keep corals


TM

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Is that piece in your tank TM? If so, are you spot feeding, how often and what type of food?

Yes, sitting under my overhang.

I feed it 3-4 times a weekon mushie mussel, then the tank get reefroids and reef booster 2-3times a week.

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my devils hand. found it in my overflow when i changed my durso to a cracker. thought it had died long ago. must be well over 2 years now. polyps are always out from 5 pm onwards til early morning

cookie or anyone, what is the latin name of this coral?? the only thing i could find was a leather?????

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I've failed on gonipora, sun corals, and Dendronephthya.

Several months then they die.

i reckon its because we are not doing it right! we try to keep our tanks so nutrient poor, skimmed to the extreme with not a piece of plankton in the water collum, removing all silicate and other potentially needed stuff (?), we don't feed at least 12 hours every day (no twice a day for 2 minutes doesn't really count) to keep these corals healthy. we are spending a small furtune on lighting but don't invest a single cent in a automatic, low pollution feeding system and we still wonder why so many "hard to keep" corals die on us. what does that tell us? we can't be very bright to say the least :-?

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good point.

but nutrient poor tanks is not the problem its that we try and put all sorts of different corals together that can be from different locations, depths etc. that require different conditions

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It's not just a matter of feeding, it's a matter of what to feed for some of these animals.

There is a difference between nutrient poor, and food poor. Ideally our systems should be nutrient poor, but food rich. But to achieve this we need skimmers to remove food before it breaks down into nutrients.

It may turn out that it's just not practical to provide the amount and type of food they need, while maintaining low nutrients.

I've only ever seen Lobophytum referred to as Devils Hand, while I've seen Alcyonium referred to as Dead Man's Finger?

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There is a difference between nutrient poor, and food poor. Ideally our systems should be nutrient poor, but food rich. But to achieve this we need skimmers to remove food before it breaks down into nutrients.

is that the definition for a BB tank? :wink:

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Yip I thought of that when I wrote that.

The introduction of a hobby phosphate test kit changed all that. It turns out that acropora's requirements are pretty basic, low nutrients and plenty of light.

There may be other practical limitations of keeping these non photosynthetic corals, like being able to culture the right kind of food, (once someone knows what it is).

Then being able to supply enough of it, and remove it quickly enough before it breaks down.

It may turn out to be like breeding yellow tangs in captivity. Possible to do, but practically impossible for a hobbyist to achieve.

Layton

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