Open brain health tips?

[StrongHandsMcGee]

Can you give me any tips on how to keep my new open brain healthy? Any specialized feeding, etc.? I spent $60 on it, so I really want to keep it in tip-top shapehttp://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/43533smallbrain.JPG

[aquababy]

I think that you have a Wellsophyllia. Trachyphyllia are sold as open brains. The care for each is the same. I have seen these corals do poorly in zero nitrate situations. I also dose my system with bromide every week. My lighting is moderate - VHO's. Although I do not hold them very long myself my customers "Praise My Brains" and report that they do very well with them. I have also noticed my open brains eating my cleaner shrimps - i do not keep them together any longer..

[EricHugo]

There is no Wellsophyllia - that name is no longer valid, and they are all Trachyphyllia geoffroyi. The Wellosphyllia morphotype seems to occur when the corals remain attached and not free-living they tend to be flat bottomed and you can often see the attachment scar on the bottom. They all tend to be low light corals and appreciate food. Bromide is not required. ;-)

[sjvl51]

What should they be fed? I feed phyto (TET & NCP) as well as just hatched brine shrimp and rotifers to my refuge. In my opinion, since the refuge is gravity feed to the display tank, this spreads out the food so there is not a lot dumped in at once. Every few days, I feed the fish some blender mush (nori, octipus, scallops, fish fillet, clams, shrimp, etc) with a couple of drops of Selcon. Should I be target feeding this coral? If so, what?

Thanks

Vickie

[suzstephens]

Originally posted by EricHugo
There is no Wellsophyllia - that name is no longer valid, and they are all Trachyphyllia geoffroyi. The Wellosphyllia morphotype seems to occur when the corals remain attached and not free-living they tend to be flat bottomed and you can often see the attachment scar on the bottom. They all tend to be low light corals and appreciate food. Bromide is not required. ;-)

Heh! Heh! For months my LFS guy has annoyed me by correcting my pronunciation of Latin names, etc. ( Well, EXCUSE ME if my Latin is a little rusty! It's been centuries since I used it.) So I took great delight in correcting him after he went to great lengths to explain to me the difference between a Trachyphyllia and a Wellsophyllia.

I have 8-10 Trachyphyllia Radiata that I bought for resale. Problem is, I've become so attached to them that I can hardly bear the thought of selling them. They are wonderfully hardy, given even not-quite-so-perfect water conditions. The biggest problem I have (since removing them from the tank containing a Flame Angel and a Blueface Angel) is allowing them enough room to fluff up and to move around.

My very favorite, a large pale mint green and pink beauty, just healed itself after a scary brush with with a filter intake. I ended up pulling both the coral and the intake tube out of the tank and tediously snipping tiny bits of plastic away from the coral's tissue until I finally freed it. Still, it was left with a flap of loose tissue and about 1/2" of exposed skeleton. Nonetheless, it is doing well a week later in spite of what looked like a mortal injury.

[StrongHandsMcGee]

OK, by "low-light" do you mean that the 72 watts of pc that is over its 10 gallon tank may be too much?

[jh775396]

I have had my brain in my tank for over 6 months and as far as I know it is still very healthy. I have 96W of PC lighting over my ten gallon nano, but the coral is half-shaded by a LR overhang. I've been feeding mine whatever it picks up that someone else hasn't eaten during feeding time. During the winter months when I didn't have to get up at 5 o'clock to beat the sun I would feed frozen brine shrimp and it seemed to enjoy that. On evenings that I feed cyclop-eeze it seems to get really excited (all mouths open), but I haven't actually seen it eat any. HTH

[jh775396]

BTW, that's a very nice looking coral.

[skoiboy]

So do they eat Cleaner Shirmp?

[suzstephens]

Originally posted by skoiboy
So do they eat Cleaner Shirmp?

I keep mine in a different tank from my shrimp, so no direct experience. However, they react to target feeding quite slowly and sometimes not at all. So the more likely problems would be brittle stars, crabs and fish etc. stealing their food before they have a chance to get a good grip on it. I finally moved the brittle stars to another tank. I sometimes feed chunks of shrimp to the trachyphyllia, then the next morning, I carefully clean up all the pieces of uneaten or not-fully-digested meat and throw it in with the brittle stars. More often, I feed them some Cyclo-peeze. I don't know for sure that they eat it though they usually extend their feeding tentacles when they sense it in the water, but all seem fat, fluffy and happy. I've actuallly only seen one cleaner shrimp eaten, but that was by a bubble tip anemone.

[StrongHandsMcGee]

Originally posted by jh775396
BTW, that's a very nice looking coral.
Thank you! I managed to somehow find this one still availibble after 2 weeks in the lfs! How someone didn't pick it up before me, I have no idea.
BTW, I have never seen this thing extend its feeding tentacles. Does this mean that its simply not hungry? Or that something else is wrong? I'm pretty sure that my movement isn't too much...I'm only using a Whisper filter to push water.

[jh775396]

mine usually extends it's sweepers at night, just after the lights go out. they don't extend very far (1/8" or less) and it takes him a while to actually get them out. my guesstimate would be that he doesn't get them extended for an hour or more after the lights switch off. i have a mini HOB filter along with the smallest powersweep for water movement.

[suzstephens]

Yours may take awhile to settle in and get acclimated before it starts running through its normal cycles. Mine usually fluff w-a-y up in the daytime. However, if they are irritated by neighbors or fish, they make shrink up into hard lumps for days at a time. More likely to see feeding tentacles sometime after lights out, especially with food in the water, and for a little while in the morning after turning on the light.

I would suggest another source(s) of water movement, such as one or two low GPH powerheads. I've gone through a lot of powerheads on my 8-10 tanks, and find that Maxi-Jet Powerheads are the most reliable. Reasonably inexpensive at drsfostersmith.com or search Froogle.com for price comparisons. (1) 600 or (2) 400's might be a helpful addition to your tank. Trachyphyllia are "opportunistic" feeders, meaning that they basically sit and wait for food to float by, so they are accustomed to some water movement. Also, they slime quite heavily to clear themselves of irritants such as sand or encroaching neighbor corals, so they need water movement to cleanse themselves. Water movement also helps circulate detritus out of the tank and into the filter and helps reduce algae growth. [In my smaller 40 gallon tanks with LPS corals, I usually use two Maxi-Jet 900s (total of around 460 gph), plus a cheapie Hagen AquaClear 70 hangon filter which yields 300 gph. That gives me a total of 760 gph.] It's nice to have anywhere from 10 to 20 times your tank's water volume in hourly water movement.

Also, Trachyphyllia are quite non-aggressive and don't mind snuggling up around each other, but they need to be protected from more aggressive corals, especially those with long sweeper tentacles like the Favites sp., Euphyllia sp., and Plerogyra sp corals, all of which can inflict some nasty burns. The Trachyphyllia can recover, but why put 'em through that?

Eric's Corals book is a must-read, especially if you're just starting to keep some of the nicer corals like your Trachyphyllia. Mine is so dog-eared that I wish I'd bought a hard cover version!

[JENnKerry]

We have a red open brain and a red closed brain in our 55 under 260 watt PCs. WE hand feed them twice a week a combination of mysis shrimp, krill, and cyclopeeze. Take a look in our gallery and you'll see pics of them in full feeding mode with their feeder tentacles out.