Flower pot...

[PeeJ]

Hmmm..it seems I always pick hard corals. HA. Well if any body wants either of these, 10 bucks takes them. Paid 30 a piece.

[Henry]

Gator, Larry was referring to the carnation and not the flowerpot that you had your hydofora. PeeJ I also have a flowerpot that is sitting on a flat rock on the sand. It has been doing great for a long time now. I have to agree with Tim, it is a very hard coral to keep, of course hindsight is 20/20 and I never should have bought this one in the first place. best of luck.

[Tim Marvin]

To tell you the truth I actually have tried both..... :( ....... The flower pot was a red with purple tips and lived about 2 years. The pink carnation made it a couple months. Carnations grow on the roofs of caves and do not photosythesis. They probably need a lot more food than we can provide in a closed system...Just a guess though.

[MikeP]

Even experts on this species of coral ( Dendronephyta ) have not been able to keep these corals long term. They have very specific requirements for flow, food particle size and other environmental conditions we have been unsuccessful to replicate. The goniopora is a little less finicky but the most common species seen in stores - Goniopora dijboutiensis is the worst, that being the greenish round dome one. Anecdotally the reds are supposed to be somewhat hardier as are some of the branching species but most all fade around the one year mark. You will occasionally find exceptions to this but it is rare. Basically they are cheap, abundant, corals that people keep buying and sticking in their tanks to die over and over again. Having a goniopora slightly more than a year is about the best success most people have - if you can keep it alive for 5 or more years I'd say you have some of it's captive requirements figured out and should share.


PeeJ - I know it's hard not to impulse buy , but ask a question here or better yet get a couple of good books you can read up on some of the different species that are in the trade. Eric Borneman's Aquarium Corals is about the best single book reference and is fairly inexpensive. Reading that will save you from wasting a lot of money and killing animals in the future.

[DeletedAccount]

I always keep a coral book and a fish book in my truck, in case I do get the impulse!

[bprewit]

I had a green flowerpot that made it to about the one year mark before it melted away. I knew they were hard to keep when I purchased it but figured that just maybe I would get lucky. Nope no such luck for me! I knew after about 6 months when even though it still looked great and opened up huge there was no growth to the skeleton and was just surviving instead of flourishing. Lesson learned and I wount buy another but they sure are cool looking!

[PeeJ]

Now it seems that my unicorn tang is missing...man.

[OrionN]

Now it seems that my unicorn tang is missing...man.

PJ,
How hig of a tank do you have?
You got to research on your fish and corals before you buy them. Unicorn Tang get huge.
Carnation is almost impossible to keep in a close system. It need so much food that we will polut our system with nutrients inorder to feed this guy.
Flower pot is not impossible. You got to have a mature tank with losts of pods for them to eat. Before my tank crashed, I got several Goniopora that were given to me, all in bad shape and I was able to nurse them back to health.
Minh

[PeeJ]

The unicorn tang is a baby at the moment (less than two inches), and yes I am well aware of their possible sizes. I figure he should do fine in my 100 gallon for the next year at least, at which point I plan on moving tanks...again

[OrionN]

PeeJ,
These fish really grow fast. Let me give you an idea how fast they grow given adequate food and room to growth. I set up my 450 g aquarium last November. Sometime in late November, I got two tangs, a Yellow and a Purple. Both of the tangs were tiny. Their body without the tail was about the size a quarter. I like to start out with small fish in my tank.
Today, both fish is about 4.5 t0 5 inches. They are not the largest Yellow or Purple tangs I have seen, but I rarely see LFS selling tangs near the size of these fish.
Minh