The Goniopora Project

[GoTakuF1]

I have a few non-green not-so-healthy colonies that I would be willing to donate to your cause if you were interested in working with different species. Just let me know if you want them :P

Sean, that would be fantastic! I hope to make some room by PIF one or two of these pieces that have been in my tank for awhile to others tanks to see how they fare. I'll definitely hit you up, thanks bud!

[maus]

Sean, that would be fantastic! I hope to make some room by PIF one or two of these pieces that have been in my tank for awhile to others tanks to see how they fare. I'll definitely hit you up, thanks bud!

Anytime, glad to help!

[SuperDragon]

GoTakuF1
We'll cut the goni from the base or back with the lease amount of polyps/tissue. Then, we'll chisel the piece into parts. I think this would work better because tearing the tissue would be better than cutting the tissue with a foreign object, no? Is my thinking flawed?

Hmm.. break the bones then tear the skin apart.
Sounds very atraumatic
Break the bones and tear the skin... OUCH!

How about cutting the skin and taking your time to chisel out the piece.
The entire unit is living tissue, but once the superfical tissue dies, so does the Goni like very other coral.
Power tools many burn skeleton if runnning at high RPM. Holding the piece
and going at it with a hacksaw will prob kill polyps. I think the chisel is the
way to go. Don't really know what I'm talking about anyways.

[GoTakuF1]

Hm...good points Long. I think you're right, the chisel is what I'm leaning toward as well. I think I might go to HD tomorrow get some new razor blades and a good chisel to get the fraggin' done since I have some free time. I think I'll try to make a total of 4 frags and keep one for myself as somewhat of a control for the experiment. I'll let you guys know how it goes. I'll give the frags maybe a month to recover and pass them on then

[GoTakuF1]

Well, Dr. Long made a house call today with his surgical tools and skills to help me frag the goni. It was quite a medical procedure thanks to our good doctor. Here is a shot of the subject before the operation:



A quick history on this specimen. It was a rescue project coming up on 1 year. It started out with tissue only on the left and right sides and has slowly grown back in quite well. Out of all the green gonioporas I've tried, this has been the quickest recovery prospect yet. At first, it was quite difficult to get all the polyps to fully retract, but once we were able to, we discovered these odd deposits of decaying matter (red arrows). Not quite sure what it they are exactly but Long said it could be a way for the coral to eject waste. I haven't seen this in any of the other gonioporas and it's quite interesting to see.



Next Long used a sterilized scaple/mini chisel to make a clean incision through the soft tissue layer.



Then to our surprise, just a few gentle hits with a hammer, the chisel broke right through the goniopora's skeleton very cleanly. Since it was such a clean cut, you can see some of the polyps still attached to both halves of the goniopora.



Long used a scapel to free those attached polyps trying to save them where he can.



Completely separated.



We plan on making two more frags by splitting piece into two.



And we end up with four frags in the end. I was planning to keep the smallest weakest looking frag as a control for the experiment but Mike volunteer to recover this piece. I proceded to mount all the frags onto pieces of LR using AquaMend.



Polyps are already coming out a few hours back into the tank!

Note: When I put the frags back into the tank, some loose polyps were hanging off one of the frags. Although this coral has been in the tank for quite some time, unfortunately these frags are considered newbies by the tank bully: the Pearlscale Butterfly. He proceded to swim by and sample a few of the lose polyps. I hope he's just doing a bit of cleaning off on the frags and not develop a taste for goniopora. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The polyp extension is good and I should be able to start feeding them tomorrow. I'll keep you guys updated on their progress.

[SuperDragon]

"It's the Gift to be Simple (no skimmer), it's a gift to be free (your mind)"
Minh you are a gifted guy.

Glad to help out with the project, being the noob around the forum has its benefits.
I enjoyed our vast discussions about husbandry, Goni's, fish, tanks, etc. Could have stayed there all day talking about controversial stuff with you if I wasn't baby sitting. Minh you have some amazing tanks, corals, fish, etc.

The Goni's skeleton/body was quite soft when using the thin sterile spatula to get towards the root of the specimen, from a pathology description it felt like going through a stale piece of "French Bread". (Pathologists like food and always describe stuff in terms of food i.e. Cottage Chesse Necrosis)
The honeycomb structure of the Goni as Minh describes it makes it difficult to minimize polyp loss with fragmentation.

As far as the holes excreting waste from the Goni these were in between polyps and after light curretage with a currete fell into the saltwater solution breaking up into what seemed like detruitus. Quite interesting and weird. These excretory holes where approx 2mm diameter (correct me if I'm wrong Minh) and were covered up by the polyps until we observed stuff coming out.

It was exciting, yet dangerous because we should have paid more attention to universal precautions (too much excitement).

Thanks for the Macro farm you donated me and other stuff...
My mandarin pair thank you also.
I will be starting a possible project out of that macro.

I'm sure the Goni will recover just fine, it was not out of the water for more than 10 min.

[swissfish]

It looks verry impressive, that is awesome work you and the DR. did.

looks like the elegance will be next.

[barometer]

Fantastic work and documentation gentlemen. Now I'm really getting excited. I hope you're considering a smaller frag for me Minh, you know my space.

[GoTakuF1]

"It's the Gift to be Simple (no skimmer), it's a gift to be free (your mind)"
Minh you are a gifted guy.

Glad to help out with the project, being the noob around the forum has its benefits.
I enjoyed our vast discussions about husbandry, Goni's, fish, tanks, etc. Could have stayed there all day talking about controversial stuff with you if I wasn't baby sitting. Minh you have some amazing tanks, corals, fish, etc.

Long, it was a pleasure chatting up about all things reefs with you. We'll definitely have to get together again soon. I couldn't have done the fragging thing without you. I'm glad someone pushed me to go for it and it was quite a relief once it's done! I hope our efforts will be fruitful and this project will be a success Thanks again, bud!

It looks verry impressive, that is awesome work you and the DR. did.

looks like the elegance will be next.

Thanks Bruno, all the credit goes to the doc. I don't "have the technology or the steady hands" (Free goni frag to anyone that can tell me where that quote came from). I'll have to give the elegance fragging a try one of these days...or years

Fantastic work and documentation gentlemen. Now I'm really getting excited. I hope you're considering a smaller frag for me Minh, you know my space.

Ed, whatever you'd like. I mounted the three largest frags on LR pieces. The fourth and smallest one is not mounted. It's your pick

[GoTakuF1]

Alright guys, 24 hours after the fragging session and things are looking great. I'm very relieved and excited. The first good news is that the Pearscale Butterfly "cleaned" the edges of the frags by picking off the loose tissue. I don't believe the fish will cause further damage but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed.

The second peice of good news is that the polyp extension is fantastic. I'm still amazed at this particular specimen's healing capability! Perhaps it has Wolverine's healing powers? Lastly, I fed the corals tonight and all the frags are feeding well. Here is the polyp extension from today on one of the frags:

[Fish n' Frags]

Superbad, i win!! LOL

[Fish n' Frags]

BTW, i'm very impressed the fragging skills you and the Dr. have demonstrated.

[GoTakuF1]

Face Off, i win!! LOL

Haha, I was thinking "Superbad" (remember that part?) but you can get a goni frag too

[Fish n' Frags]

Haha, I was thinking "Superbad" (remember that part?) but you can get a goni frag too

HA, its in both, i changed my answer at the last minute thinking you got it from Superbad. Anyways, I don't think i'd give it a good home. You can offer it to someone else. I just wanted to play the game. Great job on your project so far.

Seth: Then I'll kill you. I'll get a knife and stab you through your ****ing heart.

Fogel: Killing me won't get you alcohol. I'm the one with the fake ID!

Seth: Then I'll cut your stupid ****ing face off, throw it over mine and go buy it myself.

Fogel: You don't have the technology or the steady hands to pull of a procedure like that, so HA!

[GoTakuF1]

Lol, I think I saw both movies at least 5 times when they first came out. I didn't even remember that part in Face Off since it's been so long since I saw it. Good catch you movie guru!