Manganese is a critical trace element for Goniopora survival. Julian Sprung came to my store and explain why and what you can do to keep your Gonioporas and other LPS thriving.
Back around 1991ish, Julian narrated a VHS tape about reef aquariums. I'd love to know it's name, if it's archived anywhere, and what the music was in the opening credits. I've literally been obsessing over this for years, haha! Thanks so much for any info. ☺
Just grabbed a bag of refugite , I have two huge gonipora and feed them with Goni power, but after 5+ years they are not as beautiful, yet they have doubled in size almost.
Dude, I read your reef series. My tank is SPS dominant but I have some wallet crushing LPS pieces too and was just looking at gold, red, and purple goniopora on Saturday. Iron and Manganese. I'll remember that. I added some iodine and strontium (half of recommended dose, brand Aqua Medic) on Saturday and on Sunday all four shrimp molted. Coincidence? I do not think so. I have seen that before several times. It is a young tank so I do very little dosing and then only individual elements, giving time to observe the effects. If anything looks weird, I stop the dose and do a 20% water change. It is going very well, but I am very paranoid. I added up my livestock receipts yesterday and had aquarium nightmares all night long. In reality, 30 of 30 acropora frags are growing well and the couple of bleached out fingers are getting their color back rapidly.
How much refugite would I need for a 50 gallon system? OK to put it in the sump or does it need to be around the goniopora itself? Do you need to dose iron and maganese in addition to the refugite or is it ok to do one or the other?
1 bag is enough. if you have a refurium put the substrate there. the refugite will work as a buffer for those minerals. no need to dose as much. but as always test to make sure you are not overdosing. I dont see why you could not put the refugite by the coral itself, it should be fine