Need help with a Goniopora

[Simsung]

Hello!

I had been struggling to keep this goniopora happy.
I got it approximately 6-8 months ago, when my tank was quite new (I started it in July). At first, It seemed to be happy, it had good polyp extension.
Then it went downhill and I never managed to get it back to full health.

It looks like this for the last 3 months:

I had tried so far:
More frequent water changes (twice a week)
Dosing Iodine
Dosing KH (Been dosing KH for approximately 1.5 months now)
Feeding reef roids incl direct feeding
Feeding 1um Phytoplankton incl direct feeding
Feeding 1-20um Phytoplankton incl direct feeding

Moving it to higher and lower flow areas
Moving it to higher and lower PAR

My water parameters are (tested today)
Nitrate: Between 0.5 - 1 (Tested with Salifert)
Phosphate: 0.11 (Tested with Hanna checker), I recently overfed reefroids which probably caused the spike, I am actively working to reduce it slightly
Calcium: 450 tested with JBL and Salifert
Magnesium 1470 tested with JBL and Salifert
KH between 9.3-9.6 tested with salifert, I'm dosing Brightwell Aquatics Alkalin 8.3, which contains Bicarbonate, Carbonate and Borate salts
Salinity 1.025
Temp 25.5 celsius = 77.9F

I'm not sure if my PH meter is correct but according to it my PH is on the lower end, approx 7.8

Until now I had no refugium, today I added cheatomorpha to the sump hoping to reduce the phosphates, will keep the lights on for 10 hours a day.

I read that dosing iron, molybdenum and manganese may help, so I am considering to get Cheatogro and dose that as it contains all these elements which should help both the cheato and goniopora.
I'm just worried that It will elevate my magnesium even higher.


I am using Iquatics salt, these are params listed by the manufacturer:


Any ideas what else I could try?

thank you!


#edit

completely forgot to mention -
I got another goniopora recently and so far it's been looking perfectly happy every day with good polyp extension
Other corals appear to be fine and growing

 

[Unregistered1]

I sorry i didnt read the whole post im ocd at time But have you tried Phyto

 

[Unregistered1]

Looks like you have already tried phyto...that was going to be my suggestion Brightwell and Tropic Marin phyto

 

[((FORDTECH))]

Hello!

I had been struggling to keep this goniopora happy.
I got it approximately 6-8 months ago, when my tank was quite new (I started it in July). At first, It seemed to be happy, it had good polyp extension.
Then it went downhill and I never managed to get it back to full health.

It looks like this for the last 3 months:

I had tried so far:
More frequent water changes (twice a week)
Dosing Iodine
Dosing KH (Been dosing KH for approximately 1.5 months now)
Feeding reef roids incl direct feeding
Feeding 1um Phytoplankton incl direct feeding
Feeding 1-20um Phytoplankton incl direct feeding

Moving it to higher and lower flow areas
Moving it to higher and lower PAR

My water parameters are (tested today)
Nitrate: Between 0.5 - 1 (Tested with Salifert)
Phosphate: 0.11 (Tested with Hanna checker), I recently overfed reefroids which probably caused the spike, I am actively working to reduce it slightly
Calcium: 450 tested with JBL and Salifert
Magnesium 1470 tested with JBL and Salifert
KH between 9.3-9.6 tested with salifert, I'm dosing Brightwell Aquatics Alkalin 8.3, which contains Bicarbonate, Carbonate and Borate salts
Salinity 1.025
Temp 25.5 celsius = 77.9F

I'm not sure if my PH meter is correct but according to it my PH is on the lower end, approx 7.8

Until now I had no refugium, today I added cheatomorpha to the sump hoping to reduce the phosphates, will keep the lights on for 10 hours a day.

I read that dosing iron, molybdenum and manganese may help, so I am considering to get Cheatogro and dose that as it contains all these elements which should help both the cheato and goniopora.
I'm just worried that It will elevate my magnesium even higher.


I am using Iquatics salt, these are params listed by the manufacturer:

Any ideas what else I could try?

thank you!


#edit

completely forgot to mention -
I got another goniopora recently and so far it's been looking perfectly happy every day with good polyp extension
Other corals appear to be fine and growing

I see that your feeding 2 different kinds of phyto that’s great!!! What stands out to me is you very low almost undetectable nitrates. Has it always been this low? Is it possible it has bottomed out many times over the months and this could be your issue. I would bring it up to 5-10 IMO

 

[Pistondog]

The ORA red goni is easiest. The pinks are harder.
Flow is the biggest contribution to extension, in my limited experience.
FYI, I stopped reef roids as they are mostly phosphate.
Gonis like 10 ppm nitrate, some Phosphate, like fordtech said

 

[HomebroodExotics]

I had the same problems with a green goni. The skin eventually died back and left the polyps. Some of the polyps died off but now the coral seems to be trying to hold on and come back. But I've tried every light and flow zone in my tank with it only getting worse every time I moved it. I am chalking it up to my system just not being old enough when I introduced it since it wants to do better now but its pretty beat up, will take a while if it recovers. How old is your tank?

Edit: I have also tried every food I could get my hands on with no noticeable difference to the Goni.

 

[Simsung]

I see that your feeding 2 different kinds of phyto that’s great!!! What stands out to me is you very low almost undetectable nitrates. Has it always been this low? Is it possible it has bottomed out many times over the months and this could be your issue. I would bring it up to 5-10 IMO

What would you suggest to bring the nitrates up? I have added another small feeding during the day and added 2 clownfish.

The ORA red goni is easiest. The pinks are harder.
Flow is the biggest contribution to extension, in my limited experience.
FYI, I stopped reef roids as they are mostly phosphate.
Gonis like 10 ppm nitrate, some Phosphate, like fordtech said

Yeah I'm cutting down on reef roids. I am now making a thick paste out of it and feeding some corals directly with a long pipette so nearly nothing gets into the water column.

I had the same problems with a green goni. The skin eventually died back and left the polyps. Some of the polyps died off but now the coral seems to be trying to hold on and come back. But I've tried every light and flow zone in my tank with it only getting worse every time I moved it. I am chalking it up to my system just not being old enough when I introduced it since it wants to do better now but its pretty beat up, will take a while if it recovers. How old is your tank?

Edit: I have also tried every food I could get my hands on with no noticeable difference to the Goni.

It's 10 months old. I have sps, lps and softies growing well. Acans are popping new heads and montis are growing like weeds. Full of coralline too.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

What would you suggest to bring the nitrates up? I have added another small feeding during the day and added 2 clownfish.


Yeah I'm cutting down on reef roids. I am now making a thick paste out of it and feeding some corals directly with a long pipette so nearly nothing gets into the water column.



It's 10 months old. I have sps, lps and softies growing well. Acans are popping new heads and montis are growing like weeds. Full of coralline too.

In my system to maintain 15-20 nitrate I feed frozen 3x a day feed pellets 2x a day 40ml ab+ a day 1 sheet nori a day and I dose 5ml of nitrates daily. I’m not sure what your system will take to maintain you desired level of nitrates but it took me weeks of slowly upping all these things then eventually when all these things could not keep up the nitrate dosing started

 

[vetteguy53081]

For a long time Goniopora were considered an impossible coral to keep. There were even discussions online about it being unethical to keep importing them because of their poor survivability. Goniopora are a photosynthetic coral so they derive some of their nutritional requirements from light. This is done through a symbiotic relationship with dinoflagellates called zooxanthellae that live in the flesh of the coral. The dinoflagellates are actually the photosynthetic organism and the Goniopora colony derives nutrients off of the byproducts of the dinoflagellates’ photosynthetic process. Zooxanthellae is usually brown in color and the coral tightly regulates the population living in its flesh. Too little light will cause the coral to turn brown in color.
I would not recommend blasting Goniopora with a lot of light. I don’t think there are a lot of advantages to doing so. If you start to see the coral starting to turn lighter and bleach out, it is likely the result of high lighting intensity. When in doubt, favor lower lighting intensities until it is clear that the coral is demanding more.
One mistake I think some reef keepers make is providing them too much flow. If you have a powerhead blowing right at Goniopora from short range, it may kill off some of the tissue at that point of contact and cause a chain reaction to the rest of the colony.
Goniopora appreciate low to medium flow, but preferably with some randomness to it. That way you will get that gentle waving motion which helps keep the coral clean and brings food past the colony. If you see the tentacles violently thrashing about, that is probably too much flow and it would benefit from being relocated to a more calm section of the tank.
Lack of food is a big issue with these coral and there are two types of food to provide Goniopora. The first is liquid amino acids. In short, they are simple organic compounds that play a major role in building proteins as well as other biological functions at the cellular level. Corals regularly take in available amino acids from the water column so it is easy to provide them with adequate quantities by broadcast feeding an amino acid solution.
The second type of food I like are dry powdered plankton. There are several different types on the market.
The general consensus with these is to keep Phosphate levels around .05 ppm and Nitrate levels between 10-20 ppm. This is a safe zone that not too many people will dispute. If you need a recommendation there you go.

 

[Simsung]

I re-tested Po4 today, it's all the way down to 0.04, previous reading must had been caused by recent reef roids feeding.

I re-tested no3 and it's now undetectable. I will be heavily increasing my feedings, fingers crossed I can get it to detectable levels

 

[Simsung]

My No3 is now detectable (still ultra low) at approx 0.2-0.5

As a test I bought another goniopora at the LFS which I know has been fine for a long time.
It never opened up in my tank, it looks just as sad as the pink one.

I ordered an ICP test as I cannot figure out what is wrong.

LFS Suggested higher flow, I blasted it for 6 hours straight (ofc within reason) and it makes absolutely no difference.

 

[Freakmachine01]

I had a lot of problems with my goniopora I started giving it red reef AB for the amino acids and I also started dosing iron and manganese and it seemed to help out

 

[Simsung]

I sent off the ICP tests to the lab, awaiting results.
Green gonia and silver gonia also unhappy now.
I am dosing cheato gro which has iron, manganese and molybdenum - does not seem to be helping.

I noticed the silver goniopora closed up entirely after a WC, I sent off my RO sample to the lab as well, hopefully the mystery will be resolved.

 

[Simsung]

Mystery not resolved. ICP tests came back fine, nothing of concern.
Fedding and dosing did not help, I only got algae issues because of the increased feedings.
I tried also dosing nitrates and that did not help.

Green goniopora is dead, red one seems unchanged and silver is doing ok.

 

[PeterEde]

I bought a goni and it has never opened. never more than 1/2 ". It was a small wild colony by the rock it was on.
As a test I just bought a larger established colony I expect fragged as it's on a frag disk. So far it's going great with full extension.
I'm trying to keep flow even around it.

Did you get yours back?

 

[DE FISH]

I use Red Sea ab+ amino acids will help trust me I have a cricket ball sized colony of green gonipora with no issues even with an ato a malfunction

 

[Simsung]

Unfortunately no, all the gonis I had died.
I have an alveopora now which seems to be doing great

 

[PeterEde]

I use Red Sea ab+ amino acids will help trust me I have a cricket ball sized colony of green gonipora with no issues even with an ato a malfunction

Cricketball. I'll assume not American

 

[PeterEde]

Unfortunately no, all the gonis I had died.
I have an alveopora now which seems to be doing great

I have done more research. Think mines a bernadpora and looks great after a few days. Fragged compared to the other one which looks to be free born