Blue Berry Gorgonia Testing with Fauna Marin

[PFoster]

We received some blue berry gorgonia and thought we should run a bit of a test on these pieces and on the Fauna Marin line.



For those of you that are not familiar with the blue berry gorgonia here is a picture.
There is no question about it, these pieces are absolutely stunning!!

And for those of you that already know about the blue berry gorgonia, you are aware that they are VERY difficult to keep alive!

Typically IF these pieces come in undamaged they have very large, very blue polyps.



As this gorgonia has such large polyps many retailers bring in this coral and advertise it as a piece that could be kept by simply feeding in cylopeeze (this was common here anyways).

But it did not take people long to figure out that this is simply not the case....

Typically the blue berry gorgonia comes in and looks like the picture above for a few weeks and sadly, slowly wilts away to nothing...

Another point that is worth mentioning is that these corals will often sit in the collection beds over in Indonesia for anywhere from a few days to a few months. When I was in Indonesia last I couldn't count the number of blue berry gorgs that were in the various wholesalers tanks and had obviously been there for quite some time. Even if these piece do make it to your local retailer without receding, these are typically NOT the pieces that you want. They have gone without food for so long that you will be lucky if they ever start to feed again with any food IMO... Ideally you want a piece with the absolute shortest time possible from collection to when it gets into your tank at home.

I did explain this to our suppliers and while I can not guarantee that they will not ship the older pieces to someone else, I made it clear that we did not want to receive them!

Which bring me to our little test.
On May 22nd we received an order from one of our suppliers in Indonesia and we managed to acquire a VERY nice, very healthy collection of Blue berry gorgs. The pictures above are one that we snapped with our camera after they arrived.

We put a couple pieces into our coral beds and we put a couple pieces into our azoox tank. Our dedicated azoox tank is plumbed into our corals beds so food from the azoox tank is of course going into our coral beds, but the pieces here do not get the same food density that they do in our azoox tank. None the less, we put a couple pieces in here as a control.


Here is what we are feeding our azoox tank with:



And the tank is being fed hourly with the assistance of a Fauna Marin Dosing pump.




Can the blue berry gorgonia be kept alive in our azoox tank with a high food density, continual feeding of the Fauna Marin azoox line?

Can the blue berry gorgonia be kept alive in our coral beds with a relatively low food density?

As both tanks are on the same system, they both have the exact same water quality and parameters. Any changes that occur will therefore occur to both system so this should help to add a great deal of consistency to our experiment.

Both are being fed the same foods, BUT the azoox tank is at a high food density and our coral beds are at a low food density.

[PFoster]

Here is how I am preparing the food mixture for these piece.
1 tsp Fauna Marin Ultra MinF
1 tsp Fauna Marin Ultra Clam
1 tsp Fauna Marin Ultra SeaFan
1 tsp Fauna Marin Zoa/Acan (I didnt use this on the first batch of food, but I am using it now)
7 tsp MinD

Mix the above together and ut it in the fridge overnight.
When the mixture does into the fridge will will be a liquid. The idea here is that you are allowing the dryfood to hydrate in the MinD. Once the food has absorbed as much minD as it can what you have will be a paste.



This pic is of the "dryest" past you would want to make. This type of paste works very well with the Ultra Pac where you would be target feeding the corals as opposed to feeding the tank.

The mixture I have above is a slightly wetter paste.

And here is a picture of what happens if you do not add quite enough MinD:



Here the foods have not fully hydrated in the MinD as not quite enough was added. If you make a paste too dry like this, just add some more MinD, stir and let it sit for a few hours to overnight and it should turn into a nice paste.

But again for dosing the tank I have been making a much wetter food.

Once the food has sat overnight and fully hydrated in the MinD I food the food into my inverted 750ml bottle and fill the bottle with tank water.



In this pic you actually see some fresh phyto in the bottle which i have not been using for a while now.
The inverted 750ml bottle has 2 airline nipples on the bottom. One is drawing food, the other is food up to an air pump and a VERY small amount of air is bubbled through the food. Just enought to keep it turning and in suspension. Too much air will essentially create a skimmer in the bottle.
I would like to order a few magnetic stirrers after seeing some of the amazing azoox tanks here, but I just have not gotten around to it yet as this system has been working for me so far.

[Delphinus]

LOVE the dosing setup with the mini fridge! Awesomeness!

[PFoster]

Thanks!
I completely blogged how I built the entire setup including layout, drilling the fridge everything. Even took pictures of how I modded the bulk heads to he shorter so that the tank could be closer to the wall. I will start a new thread and post it up soon.

[PFoster]

Now as for flow rates, One of the blueberry gorgonia is about 12" infront of an MP10 at full strength. This one move too much in the current for me to get a decent picture


Here is a pic of the tank when I first upgraded our tank from a 24g solana to a 24"x24"x18" tall perfecto so no corals have been transfered into the tank yet in the pictue but I posted is so that you can see the rocks structure and pump placement. I have this build posted on other forums but I can post it up here too if you want.



One of the other blueberry gorgs is right on the front of the rock structure. With the MP10's on each side. This gorg gets very good, but indirect flow. This piece is the one that I have actually been taking the pictures of and posted in this thread.

And we have a third blue berry at the back of the tank. This area is the lowest flow area in the tank by far.

[PFoster]

I snapped some pics when I mixed up my latest batch of food.

I know I posted it before but none the less...

Here are the foods that I am using:
1 tsp Fauna Marin Ultra MinF
1 tsp Fauna Marin Ultra Clam
1 tsp Fauna Marin Ultra SeaFan
1 tsp Fauna Marin Zoa/Acan
7 tsp MinD

I add all the dry foods into a 500 ml beaker



An actual beaker is not required

Add the 7 ml of Fauna Marin MinD and mix it up.



Now I put the food mixture into the fridge overnight.

I was crazy busy as per usual and forgot this mixture in the fridge for an extra day so it is a bit more of a stiff paste than normal but you can definately see that the Fauna Marin foods are fully hydrated in the MinD.



When you tilts the beaker the food slowly slides as opposed to pours to one side.



You can see how thick the food mixture is here. This definately qualifies as a thick paste!



Now I take the Fauna Marin Food mixture, add approx 500ml of tank water and stir.



Now I pour the mixture into my super high tech food resevoirs

Normally i do take the time to clean these out after every time that I add food into them but this week was just too busy so unfortunately this bit of maintenance was skipped this on this occasion.



If you were wondering what exactly I am talking about there, if you look carefully at the bottle above you can see some red residue on the pop bottle that the food mixture is in. Right now I am using an air pump to slowly bubble in the food mixture to stop any food from settling out. Its not ideal as it does cause a small amount of food to basically skim out but only a tiny bit.I do plan on upgrading to some magnetic stirrers but all in good time.

I did not snap a pic, but I do actually top up the above pop bottle with some more tank water so that there is just under 750 ml of water in the bottle.

The tank is dosed 10 ml, 24 times a day so thats 240ml per day total. So the food that I prepare lasts approx 3 days.

Yup its a lot of food!
This tank is tied into my sps tank and I have definately not seen ANY algae bloom or coloring down of the acros. Far from it in fact, they are coloring up better than ever.

[PFoster]

Claude of Fauna Marin posted this pic up on RC.

I really am not surprised that he has already been incredibly successful with this species. And not just at keeping it alive, but also propagating them!