Gonioporas are better left in the ocean. The problem is that once the membrane is broken, it will die. It might take several years, it might take several days, but it will die in the long run. Also, goniopora are harvested by breaking a head off of a colony. Inevitably, the colony will also die. Just because it swells and gets larger doesn't mean it's going to live. I have never ever ever seen a goniopora in anyones tank anywhere that was actually growing new tissue. Many of them expanded, but you will notice that on every single goniopora you see in the store, there are sections of it's skeleton that you can see. Never will you see one that is overgrowing this skeleton. That is because it's in the process of dying instead of growing. I had success with 2 pieces of goniopora, but the only reason I did was because they were growing on a piece of live rock. They hadn't been broken off of a larger colony, but instead, were the beginnings of a colony themselves. The grew a tiny bit, and after several years, I broke down my reef and gave them to a friend. They died within a couple of weeks. Also, I don't know why anyone would ever mail order a goniopora. They cannot handle shipping to begin with to get to the seller in the first place, and then to want to ship one again? Crazy.
By the way, you can also tell the difference between xenia species and goniopora and alveopora by looking at the number of fingers each polyp has. If I remember correctly, goniopora has 24 fingers on each polyp, alveopora has 12 fingers on each polyp, and xenia (which is a completely different species, not even a stony coral) has 8(?).
[ November 11, 2001: Message edited by: davelin315 ]</p>
