Goniopora care

[Salt Creep]

I am getting this beautiful goniopora today and was wondering if I could hear success tips from people. The last time I had one was 10 years ago. It didn’t show up in the best condition and didn’t make it past a few months. I kinda gave up on them at that time because of all the people who said it was near impossible and unethical to try and keep these. I know some things have been learned about these coral since then.

From what I have researched manganese and maybe vanadium are key. I am feeding live phytoplankton daily and have the Red Sea trace colors kit coming. I plan on keeping it in a spot with moderate flow and around 150 PAR.

What else should I know? Share some of your tips if you have kept Goniopora long term and had it thrive

 

[OrionN]

I don't have problem with keeping Goniopora and Aveopora. They are essentially identical ingrowth requirement. General good water quality with good Ca and Alkalinity is needed, the same as all hard corals. Moderate light is needed and not excessive water movement. More on the low side. They will benefit from feeding, I documented Goniopora polyps eat frozen mysis shrimp in one of my threads at ReefCentral many years ago.
When you feed the tank, squirt a few squirts of the frozen food at these corals and they will reward you with vigorous and healthy growth.
Recently, I bought a frag of a common Alveopora, freshly cut. It is a massive (non-branching not a huge frag) Aveopora in growing habit. It is already forming new polyps and the flesh have grown down the side of the cut and almost to the frag plug after about 2 weeks. I have grown frags like below to large colonies with skeleton 4 inches in diameter over several years.

 

[MartinM]

I pretty much only keep clams, anemones, and goniopora, Orion is spot on as usual.

In summary:

- They do NOT handle sudden changes in alk/mg very well at all, they will often 'brown jelly' or get necrotic tissue issues, acclimate slowly to your system
- Have an antibiotic (I've used Ciprofloxacin and Amoxicillin) and/or iodine on hand (iodine dip, if that doens't work, Ciprofloxacin) if they do brown jelly or 'tissue bubble'. IME this is caused by alk/mg changing too fast. Iodine dip all new arrivals, also
- They love Red Sea AB+ and frequent feedings (I dose a custom liquid food mixture and AB+ 24x7 and don't use mechanical filtration or skimmers so they're essentially always getting fed)
- They are a commercially farmed coral for bone grafts, etc, so there's a lot of research about them on google scholar. Some highlights from this research is they pretty much only use the violet and blue parts of the spectrum, more than 6 hours of light per day doesn't increase their growth, feeding dramatically increases their growth, and they don't need very high PAR, more than ~90 didn't increase growth rate
- Don't put them in current stronger than medium flow
- They take a long time to acclimate to new environments (1-2 months to really start to grow, IMO). Don't move them around.

I typically see growth rates of a few polyp frag to a skeleton the size of a tennis ball in about 2.5 years. I have some that started out the size of a golf ball that hit the size of a softball also in about 2ish years.