Gorgonia ventilana aka heaven ...

[Delphinus]

Well they're not hearty. Hearty is a term used to describe soup. (sorry, had to become the grammar gendarme, but that one is a pet peeve. "Hardy" != "Hearty").

I had one for about 4 years, doubled in size. Only lost it this year due to a combination of tank troubles, and overstocking decisions on my part, and the fact that all the LFS's in my area suddenly decided to stop stocking frozen Cyclops-eeze which was the food that was working for me with this coral. I went through several other coral foods even some that had Cyclops-eeze as ingredients but they did not produce the same feeding response that pure frozen Cyclops-eeze had done. Eventually it stalled and eventually withered. But I had a pretty wicked run with it until things went wrong.

The "secret" I've found with gorgonians:
- solid base is a must. There cannot be any movement of the base of the coral or even the rock it is on. Ie., must be cemented firmly in place to the point it is a massive ordeal if you want to move it.
- good lighting, good flow, etc. etc. we all know this one
- finding the right food, even photosynthetic gorgs benefit from feeding. I actually lost several photosynthetic gorgonians in the dry spell that I couldn't obtain frozen Cyclops-eeze. Amazing to me how dependent they all got to the one specific food that was working.

Seriously though, I noticed a HUGE difference in growth rates of gorgs - be it purple ribbon, purple plume, rhumphella, corky fingers and others .. between just having them glued to a piece of rubble versus glueing them to a >2lb solid rock that had no wiggle to it whatsoever. I think this is key with gorgs.