Coral Id

[Demm]

Well i got this coral yesterday from a LFS the lady said it was a gonipora. She told me that it would be easy to keep, and that it is an sps, and it's non-aggressive. well i posted the pic of it on my journal, and i was told it's definately not a goniopora. so now im in need of an ID. it has little polyp things that look like circular flowers almost. they are really tiny and come out of all those little holes. when the coral closes up it shuts all those holes. these are the best pictures i could get, so hopefully they will help in getting an ID, and knowing how to take care of it right.

it's basically encrusted onto a rock, it's almost all the way around. you can see a bit of the rock from the underside.

thanks alot!

pic of it kinda closed up:

 

[Demm]

maybe some kind of Cyphastrea?

 

[SkiFletch]

Now that you mention it, yeah it does really look like cyphastrea

 

[Demm]

hmm well i posted about this coral on my local forums as well. one guy says that he's 100% sure that it's an astreopora. i looked up pictures and sure enough it looks exactly the same...so now i gotta look up care for them. they say it looks really unhappy, so hopefully i can do better for it. it's under 324 watts of T5 in a 55g...

 

[SkiFletch]

These guys are pretty sensetive hard corals and their health is more likely the funciton of poor calc/alk/mg/po4 balance and/or flowrate than it is about lighting.

 

[Demm]

so in other words your telling me "good luck" rofl. well we'll see how it goes, i'm up for the challenge, even tho all my other corals are simple ones.

so as far as aggressiveness how bad are these things? i havent noticed any sweepers or nothing, but as far as the chemical warefare i have no idea.

 

[SkiFletch]

Not aggressive at all. They have exceptionally short sweeper tentacles usually only coming out at night, and pose littel threat to any other corals.

Remember, you need the following chemistry to keep them well:

Calc - 400-450ppm
Alk - 9-11dKH
Mg - 1250-1350ppm
PO4 - 0-0.03ppm, no higher than 0.03

Tricky and those values are a little on the high side, but if you keep ions high, you won't get caught off-guard when demand for one goes up in your tank unexpectedly

 

[Demm]

i have no magnesium tester lol, guess i should go out and get one. i regulary dose the kent marine magnesium supplement tho. about 10ml per week

 

[andywg]

i have no magnesium tester lol, guess i should go out and get one. i regulary dose the kent marine magnesium supplement tho. about 10ml per week

Some of the best advice on dosing:

Never dose with something you aren't testing for.

 

[SkiFletch]

Agreed. While magnesium may be one of the less-reactive ions in seawater chemistry, blindly dosing is never a good habit to get into, you can do more harm than good

 

[Demm]

alright. i've been wanting to get test kits today and yesterday but the stores are all closed lol. so i'll be getting some tomorrow, thanks!

 

[Musho3210]

look for salifert or something thats high quality, the bad testers (some API tests, knock off brands, ones that youve never heard of that are on clearance price and somehow all the employees use it with great results even though last time you were there you saw them testing their tank water with salifert....)

 

[SkiFletch]

Agreed, Salifert and Seachem make some of the better-quality test kits out there

 

[Demm]

yep i was going for salifert