Question about Gorgonians

[Proud2B]

Hello everyone,
while at a lfs I noticed some gorgonians that were just lying at the bootom of their show tank and had a scary amount of tissue loss on them one was a red tree? gorgonian and the other was a yellow tree? the guy at the lfs let me have them (i had asked if i could buy them, i just had to try to rescue them) the red one i placed in the ten gallon hex that will soon be my seahorse tank and it has acclimated and has about 10 polyps extending for feeding, it broke up into a few pieces with the 3 smallest being only about an inch long i put the larger piece in the hex and put the tiny ones in my 12 gallon nano the tiny pieces seem to be doing great ( good number of polyps all extended) the larger one is not as good and the yellow one which is also in the 10 gallon hex has not extended any polyps yet my question is will the larger red one grow more polyps over time as i feed it and is the yellow one beyond hope or help? I know that both of these need good current and flow and regular feeding as they are non photosynthetic.I placed them directly in the output flow from the HOB filter and I am currently target feeding them with DT's live phtoplankton(just a drop or two from a pipette per polyp). Does anyone have a suggestion as to the best food for them and also how soon I should expect to see new tissue growing to replace the lost tissue? Thanks fo any info and help you can provide

[Ray1214]

The yellow gorgos tend to be shy and it seems like one polyp will open at a time. One method I used to coax mine in my old Seahorse tank was to use a 2 litre bottle with the bottom cut out. And place it over the specimen (mine happend to be small enough) and I dropped some DT's into it. I got more polyps to come out by next feeding.

Try to keep some flow on it since gorgos are notorious algae magnets.

Ray

[Proud2B]

Ray1214,
hey thanks for the info, this morning I moved the yellow gorgo to my nano which has stronger flow and it was still not opening at all. since I was doing my regular maintenance I figured I'd move it before I did my water change and see if it was a flow issue that was keeping it closed. It was not the issue, once I did the 10% water change the little bugger opened right up and started feeding. I'm guessing he either did not like the water chemistry or liked the extra nutrients in the water after the water change. so far everyone is open and feeding I just might save these guys yet

[Ray1214]

Good deal, It sounds like you are doing what ever that gorgo wanted you to do. It be getting happy rather quickly. just wait when all the polyps open up. They are gorgeous like that .

Ray

[Proud2B]

Ray you are absolutely right they are gorgeous when they are fully opened like that When i got back this morning from another attempted rescue misson i discovered him totally opened up and feeding now if only the largest red one will LOL. that one opens up and feeds but not fully yet the other rescue mission failed miserably I'm affraid they only seemed to care about proffit not their animals health and had already thrown in the trash can the gorgonians and sponges being killed by the green hair algae problem thy have) I rescued a bright red cluster duster that they had put in a tank with a "strawberry" crab that was munching on it I spent about 40 minutes picking and scraping the green hair algae from that guy and hopefully it won't come back, but if it does i'll get a mithrax crab or a mexican reg legged crab to clean it up.

[Ray1214]

Not to steal away from your thread, how do you frag a gorgo. The red sea ones I just clip, but the yellow ones I kinda worry about fragging and mine keeps growing. Not that I am complaining, I am hoping to get curtain of gorgos on the back on my tank.

Ray

[Proud2B]

Ok if it is a tree, branch, or feather type gorgonian you simply cut it with a very sharp knife/blade, you then remove a 1/4 to half inch of the tissue( the pretty stuff using wire strippers or something like that and then glue it into a hole in a piece of rock fragment or whole rock, you may have to drill a small hole in the rock to fit it into. i use gell superglue to glue it into the rock. you cannot just glue it as the glue will kill the stem tissue eventually and the new frag will fall off. this is why you strip back the outer tissue so that it will regrow and attach to the rock. the tissue you strip off may grow a new gorgonian if it is placed on the sand or a rock upright, but the water quality has to be near perfect and you must also leave a small bit of the stem in it.If it is an encrusting gorgonian you are trying to frag you can cut a piece off the rock using a razor blade to cut it and then peel it off the rock, just like you do with star polyps. then you use nylon mesh and rubber bands to hold it to the new rock while it attaches, usually within a week or two. hope this helps