Dendro Owners

i'm tired of waiting


on the duncans, do most of you keep them in high or medium light and high or medium flow?

i'm considering moving mine but didn't know what direction to try...

 

Mine is in moderate light with moderate flow. I try to keep it in as calm spot. Sways all day in moderate flow. It has grown well.... I don't target feed anything.

Here it is October 09



And now May 10



you can see where it is in that pic. Grown alot. My MP 40 is on that side of the tank. It does not get blown on, but gets the return flow through the rocks.

 

o man ive been tryn to find a nice dendro forr the longest time... my lfs had them once at $50 a head and they were small heads.if anyone wants to frag me off some... lol these area awesome good job guys keep it up

 

hey everyone I was interested in getting a sun coral or dendro, but I was wondering how can you tell the difference between them? Does one have longer tentacles or the mouths look different, or is it the colors of them? I can tell which ones are duncans because they are not yellow usually blue...

 

Ahh. Can't believe i missed this thread and club. A Dendro was pretty much my first coral i got.

I just want to clear a few things up though. Dendros are non-photosynthetic and they contain no zooxanthellae at all. They get all their nutrients from feeding with their tentacles. They get no benefit from being out in the day/light. In the wild they live on deep vertical walls, cave entrances and under overhangs. They mainly come out at night to feed on the elevated plankton levels that occur in the ocean at night. They dont require direct feeding as long as they are kept in a location that will get plenty of flow and you use a food designed for filter feeders. However, just like a lot of other lps corals, the Dendro does appreciate a good mouth full of more substantial food now and again. I personally have had success with feeding them dried brine shrimp, just simply using my fingers to place some food directly in its tentacles. You can train a dendro to come out during the day simply and easily. All you need to do is remember the golden rule of keeping it in a shady area, then simply trick it into opening up by 'wafting' a filter feeder mix over its heads. You may need to do this for quite a few days for it to successfully want to stay out during the day time. As for water conditions. I have found that its requires nothing out of the ordinary. Its important to maintain a high enough calcium level (But you should be doing that anyway if you have a reef tank, right? ) Also studies have shown that its one of those corals that actually prefers non-pristine water conditions and actually prefers an environment which is high in nutrients. (to a certain extent of course). Anyway...thats all that i know from experience and first hand knowledge. There was a good article in Aprils 'Freshwater and Marine Aquarium' regarding Dendros and other 'Twilight corals' starting on page 60.

On to the most important part of my post. The pictures! Yay!

When i first got it. I believe it had 12-13 heads


Most recent pic has 20 heads now

 

Thanks for those difference NeighborTomita definitely the kind of stuff I was looking for!! Hopefully I will be able to tell what I am looking at now when I go to the LFS to get some I will probably opt for the sun corals over the dendros tho if they have them!!

 

so back to the reason for the bump

 

I keep my duncans in med flow and medium light. 2 years ago i started with 2 polyps, and now have over 40. I have fragged mine into 2 seperate colonies and have placed them in 2 parts of my tank. The one that has more light and little less flow is usually more open and extended, while the other one that is lower in the tank has more flow, less light is not as extended as the other.

On side note...last night i target fed all my corals (use coral freenzy, zooplankton, restore, amino acids mixture) and they grabbed onto that and loved it. I then took broken pieces of freeze dried krill and fed it to all my lps and they all swallowed it up) they are so fat right now!

I have both dendro and black sun corals. In my experience both grow very slow, but the dendro is amazingly slow. I started with one polyp about 6 months ago, while it has grown in size, (big and fat...just like me) it has not grown another polyp. I think I see the start of one finally on the side but not sure!

either one you choose you just have to be dedicated to feeding it very frequently

 

sold my dendro

Well 9 months later I sold it off-I may grab another down the road and grow it out also-I started w/ 4 heads;



and end with almost 17 that were taking food;



Hope everyone's are doing well-I dont really spend time here anymore but wanted to post up a final shot

 

Cool thread. Here is my heads. It has two large ones and one new very small on at the base. As you might be able to see, there are some lumps on the side of the large one and Im wondering if these are going to be new heads too?