Chili coral - questions for a keepers

[dendro982RC]

My tanks numbers:
in unlit tank each kind opens in own time, for a long hours;
white and pinkish polyps, tropical, diff. kinds behave differently;
temp steady 24 and 25.5C (diff. tanks), summer heat - up to 28C, min ever - 22C.
Ca: 400-420 mg/l
Mg: 1250-1285 mg/l
SG: 1.026
NO3: 5 to 80 mg/l (limits ever, in diff tanks; usual - 10-40, diff tanks)
PO4: 0-1 mg/l (limits, diff tanks, diff time, usual 0 - 0.25, diff tanks)
Food: ~8x day feeding, pinch each time. CyclopEeze, ZoPlan, sm. particles from frozen cubes, now frozen rotifers, baby brine, cyclops, decaps. brine shrimp eggs.
Flow - up to 40x tank volume/hr, sideway.
Lighting: no light was best, max was 110W PC 90g (342l) - deepwater fish tank.
Tanks with low floating particulate matter (debris) were the best - less sediment on coral, less algae growth.
Filtration: daily changed finest micron sock (fair guess 25 mk), skimmer and biomedia after mechanical filtration - were the best. PO4 remover helps (any available), 3-4x more, than usual, LR or biomedia - too (better opening, don't ask me why )
Tanks size, all are with sumps to hold hardware and biomedia: 5, 6, 90g or 19, 23, 342 l.
Timing, starting from: Feb06 vertical, Apr06 palmatum (with suns), Dec06 digitatum (mini), May07 biggest.
Dormancy, or long time closing without feeding: everyone, for few months, not repeated in the same season next year.
Water: tap water (Toronto) with Seachem Prime conditioner, salts: mostly Instant Ocean (with raised Mg and Ca by R. Holmes-Farley) and Red Sea, tried also: Kent, Oceanic, Reef Crystals, Tropic Marin Pro Reef - prefer the last. Additives - dry Seachem's.
Positioning: in strong reflected (diffused) flow, up to slightly bending polyps, with flow around.
Hanging upside down created problems.

Illustrations:
in 90g/ 342 l low light tank:

PHs are Seio 620.

Hanging upside down created problems:
- Vertical - stopped opening, and later preferred vertical position (better opening)
- palmatum kind w suns - always was vertical,
- digitatum mini kind - impossible keep hanged: it has almost fluid behaviour, leaving substrate and attaching, where it likes. The only possible way was saddle-bags like:



- the biggest was hanged because lack of space, tried to use all 3D, and it inflated each time in a new direction:
soon after hanging:

1 month later:

3 months since was hanged upside down:

Now had grown suction rootlets (?) and attached itself to the bottom.

[designsonline.co.uk]

Hi Sorry, I dont have any photos of them at the moment, I may be able to take some at some point, but I dont really have the time at the moment...


- what food the tank receives (amount and frequency),
Mostly just marine flake with dried shrimp mixed in, and Nori, occatioally a bit of coral vibrance, but very very rarely. I do regularly blast the rocks and this throws the "dust" on them up in to thwe water which the LPS and filter feeders seem to like.

- flow (turnover rate, tank volume x times per hour), 2 x Tunze 6201 Streams (20'000 litres and hour each) 1 x 6100, plus a modded Maxijet 1200 and also a 2500 ocean runner, and an Eden powerhead, and my main sump return is 7000 litres per hour.

- what filtration are you using, Live Rock, sand bed in the tank, 2 skimmers (an AM 5000 Shorty and a Deltec Turbo Skimmer 1250) and I have just added Zeolith stones to the sump.

- tank size; 5 foot bowfront 2.5 foot deep, 2 foot front to back , with a 3 ft sump

- light; 2 x 250 w halaides , and a 150 halaide, and 2 x 55w T5 actnic Plus Plus tubes on main tank. (Soon to be upgraded to 3 x 250w halaides digital electronic ballast luminarcs)

- for how long are you keeping it (for a record, how long chili is able to live in such tank), as stated before only about 4 months or so

- did it had period of being contracted, without opening for a feeding, for a months; at the beginning or not, repeatedly in the same time of the year or not; Havent noticed that..

- are you using natural salt water, RO/DI with artificial salt mix (which one most of the time), or the same on tap water? In the summer I use NSW, durring the winter artificial salt mix, always with RO polished with DI, never used tap water.

[jacksok]

Hi there, I have two chilli cactus corals (Nephthyigorgia spp). Bought the first in January 2005, the second a month or two after. So they are around 3 years old now.





Very tempramental, will sulk for months at the slightest excuse (as mine are currently doing as I've just moved them to a new tank). Feed a mix of particulate foods - I've seen the polyps catch quite large particles of Golden Pearls (up to 800-1000 micron).

They were kept in a dedicated, unlit filter feeder tank until recently. That tank was part of a much larger 1200 litre system so I could get away with comparatively heavy feeding. Moved them to the main tank as there was an overhang I wanted to try and fill.

HTH

Keith

[dendro982RC]

Thank you, very helpful!

If and when you can, post, please, pictures of the whole coral shape - to know how variable they can be, and closeups of anything interesting, you had seen with them in your tanks. Full tank (or where the chilis are) shots.

Can you add water temperature and extremities, they tolerated in your tanks? Who has not tropical species, too.

And your opinions about their minimal requirements: flow, frequency and amount of feeding, and so on.
I clearly am giving too much, will reduce.

jacksok:
Can you add amount and frequency of feeding, what food (variety) you are giving, in how high flow they are, tank temperature?
I really want to keep mine alive, but make the system reasonable.
Is it normal, when they inflated, that sclerites are quite apart, or this is some feeding deficiency?
Anything interesting from their life too.
Thanks.

[ChrisBFish]

Originally Posted by dendro982RC

Thanks again, continue, please.

And photos, open, if possible, closed - if not, and a link to the closest image on the web (you can find them through Image search for Chili coral or Latin name).

recent photo of it open at night. Terrible pic as I ended up using a torch to try and get just enough light for the picture, but not enough to disturb the rest of the tank!


various older open-ish pictures - these don't show the polyps fully open; at the moment I can't find a good pic of that...





closed (just after we got it, which is why it's standing up. Haven't taken a 'closed' photo of it since!):

ChrisBFish: Thanks for detailed answers, I'm trying to get the whole picture of their preferences and tolerances.
Can you add as much as possible, from the list above?
As I understand, this is pipefish tank, low flow, lower temperature - as for seahorses.

It's a lower flow, but still tropical temperature as they're tropical pipefish. I can't remember what it's running at now, but think I posted it earlier - probably about 27C. I'm not sure what the flow is, but would guess it's about 10x tank volume per hour. Can't remember the tank volume or the pumps that are in there right now, and all the lights are off as normal by the time I get to the computer!

Tank is 36"x16"x16"; it's been set up (in various ways) for about a year, I think - possibly slightly less. For most of that time the lighting was 2 white and 1 blue T8 bulbs. A couple of months ago we changed that to 4x39w t5s (2 blue, 2 white).

The water is RO/DI, and we use Tropic Marin Pro-Reef (have never used any other salt).

HTH

[dendro982RC]

Thank you so much! I really would like such information coming from other keepers too - big help for evaluating and adjusting own practices.

[dacmirc]

Hi i have a red chilli coral. Id just like to ask do they burn under metal halides? I bought mine around 5 month ago and it has grown massive in very little time. When i first purchased it it would only come out at night. I keep it in a very open cave due to the size of it. I will post some pics next weekend. I have recently added a maxi jet 750 pointing directly at the red chili coral and now it comes out when ever it pleases. I have been reading your threads and my water quality is good except my nitrate is around 5ppm and i cant get this down. This has been a problem since cycling but all my coral seem perfectly heathy and vibrant. I feed it marine snow half a capfull every two days.If any body has any questions or surgestions please pm me id be very greatfull

regards Lee

[liono]

Have placed mine in a cave ,no special feeding -just opens at night when the phyto goes in but it,s deffo getting larger all the time

[dendro982RC]

Thanks and more details, please: tank and corals photos, flow rates (in addition to brand names, different continents have different supplies, l/hr could be the common denominator), temperatures, salinity, natural salt water or which salt mix (could be important, could be not), frequency and amount of feeding, observations - anything.
You see for yourself, how different they are.

[angel-luver!]

well not sure what i can add here but will try some basics, to be honest have never had any difficulty with chilli coral (Nephthyigorgia i believe) apart from an odd few, ive not really had a prob with azoo corals, partly because my display tank isnt filtered, its only got circulation pumps. water is cleaned by algae/rock and critters. the tank i have my chilli in at mo is a 10gallon tank wit jus an oversized internal filter creating lots of flow and it does well in there, opens up everyday, mainly at nite or when i feed the tank. I feed live phytoplankton to all my marine tanks and think its the king of all coral foods. when i have the chilli coral i feed it small to smallish foods depending on the size of the polyps (rotifers/cyclops etc) there is no regularity to the feeding but live phyto is put in weekly at the least. my last chilli that got huge was fed small foods with no regularity, initially had it face up on the sand but began to get detritis and algae growth on it so moved under a overhang, infront of a external filter outlet. i fragged it a sold it
(along with my xmas tree coral which got huge) coz i changed my tank around.
no pics of the current chilli coral, but have a few pics of my tank in the gallery on here, the pics are from my biggest tank (240l) only has 3 circulation pumps, no skimmer/filter.