Dendro or no Dendro

[keithntracy]

We were thinking about purchasing a dendro and decided to do a bit of research first. We came across this article. Anyone have any feedback about this?

thanks!

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_2/cav2i5/dendros/dendros.htm

[Me No Nemo]

Darn double posts!

[Me No Nemo]

If you are thinking of what is more commonly referred to as a "dendro," then reference dendrophyllia. The article you posted about is dendronephthia, or carnation coral, almost impossible to keep. Dendrophyllia is often kept with great success. HTH, Marcye

[keithntracy]

Awesome!!! Thanks a bunch for noticing that for us...duh...hhhmmm, we may be adding ourselves to your list!

[Me No Nemo]

Easy mistake...the names are so alike and are often confused. They are really beautiful, but do require daily feeding. Mine can eat a half of silverside in one feeding.:eek1:

[chrisstie]

Mine can eat quite a few mysis at a time too but the baby its growing only 1 since its so small. Not hard to take care of at all i think you should be able to do fine with it in one of your tanks :)

[waterfaller1]

Try chopped squid, they get huge after! Here are 2 polyps fighting over a piece.:D

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v223/waterfaller1/Picture189a.jpg

[cristhiam]

nice waterfaller1, is yours open during day? what is the secret? I saw the one at SITC last weekend and it's open during the day.

I feed mine every other day when lights go out and sometimes in the morning, it opens huge! I feed it shrimp, squid, cyclopeze, I just spray around it. When I try to feed it during the day I use the bottle method and put some food in it until starts to open but when it gets a hold of food eats it and closes back up. Never opens like it does at night.

[Me No Nemo]

Do you have a shaded area you can move it into? It may not like the light, especially if it's bright. They are often found under ledges and in caves in the wild. HTH, Marcye

[cristhiam]

My lights are VHOs, the frag is on the sand bed on the right side of the tank that doesn't get direct light since the tank is a 6' and lights are 48" I do have a cave like that I can place it but I'm afraid my pistol might take it under, man that shrimp is busy building tunnels all over, I saw it for the first time in like 4 months :) very nice blue legs from SITC :). Going back to the dendro :) I'll try to do a cave like or maybe I can place it under the orange cap around the middle of the tank.

The dendro is on the right side of the tank
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~pinatas/10months/DSC00001.jpg

[Me No Nemo]

Beautiful tank!!! Maybe try something temporary to see if you it helps. They may sense the light and instinctively feel vulnerable to prey.

[cristhiam]

Thanks, I think I'm going to place it under the cap and see how it does. It's more secure on the rock than the sand

[cschweitzer]

Do not put dendrophyllidae on the sand bed if you have fine sand!!!!!!!! Sand irritates the polyps. All of this family will not be on the sand in the wild, as they hang from underneath rock cliffs. Even if they're right-side up istead of upside down, a nice rocky, shaded area with enough flow to keep it clean of debris(again, upside-down in the wild takes care of this) but not enough to shake the polyps too much would be ideal...also when you clean debris off of the coral, do it when the coral is closed.

These are my experience with them, but that could be different for everyone. Especially now that many of the dendro family(including, but not limited to dendrophyllia, balanophyllia, ryzotrochus, some tubastrea and turbinaria, etc.) are now aquacultured. Times, they are a-changing.

[cschweitzer]

One somewhat major change to what I said:

Turbinaria and Duncanopsammia, and some species of Heteropsammia contain zooxanthellae