High Tide Aquatics

Any experience with the "Impossible" Goniopora/Alveopora Corals?

Enderturtle

Enderturtle

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Was at one of our local LFS's and saw these beautiful gonioporas and alveoporas. As some of you may know, the alveoporas and gonioporas corals are hard to keep. Sometimes dying after a couple months out of nowhere. I've heard the green gonioporas are the hardest to keep. Alveopora being slightly easier to keep. The trick appears to be heavy feeding since they come from turbid/nutrient rich waters. Products like Goniopower are suppose to help sustain them.

I think these are one of those most beautiful corals in the hobby. I love their flower-head polyps and have wanted one since I started keeping my reef tank.

Has anyone here kept a goniopora or alveopora long term?

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Ive kept both , the goni Ive struggled with a bit. I have been told they like dirtier water. Not sure how much of that is true. Ive heard others say that the Alveopora is the easier of the 2
 
I have heard that keeping them in a species tank works best. Dirty water. Maybe try a tank with goni, alveopora and other dirty water lovers like euphyllia.
 
Im just lucky @Geneva! I guess my tank is just slightly on the dirty side because i went without feeding my red(pink?) goni for awhile so it must be getting its food source somewhere ie fishpoop or snail poop.
 
I've had a red/pink goni for a few months. It seems happy since it's extended and growing. I don't target feed very often but when I feed frozen food I don't drain off the 'juice'. Perhaps that's what it's eating.
 
I had a goni in my old 140g. It lived for about 6 months before slowly withering away. I ran a pretty nutrient poor system however.
 
I wouldn't touch any other color goni/flowerpot. The only one you should get is the Red Goni its a super hardy strand and there is a reason why ORA decide to cultivate red goniporas instead of the green or other colors and the red ones look prettier in my opinion.
 
I have never tried the green G. stokesii, but I had both a goniopora (maybe djboutiensis) and alveopora for several years in the tank I just shut down. They grew very well (the goni probably grew to about 20 times the number of polyps in 3 years (skeleton went from roughly a thumbnail size to a fist size). I didn't target feed them, but I did feed the tank a lot. They don't need 'dirty' water, as my nitrate was 0 (d and d test kit) and phos was 0.03 (elos test kit). I do think high flow helps. pic from just before I shut it down.
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I've tried 3 of them in the past, two pinks and one bright green. Only one survived and still have it for about 3 to 4 years now. It's almost the size of a golf ball and was half that when introduced, so very slow growing for me. Funny thing, it was only one of two corals that survived my tank crash which killed all my other corals and all my fish. A quarter side of it is dead skeleton because I didn't control one small aptasia near it which grew, but the rest is still happy.
 
I kept a big green one (was a smidgen smaller than a volleyball when fully expanded) for several years. They seem to be quite fussy about exactly the type/direction/amount of flow they get, but otherwise not too bad if your params are GOOD and STABLE. Ultimately lost it due to a bad test kit - gonis don't like crazy high mag IME. I've also kept the somewhat smaller red ones (the kind ORA sells) without too much trouble.

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