We’ve had Red Goniopora in the greenhouse for nearly a decade, but it was only in the last 3 years that we started fragging the broodstock. We were amazed to discover that it grew a lot faster than anticipated. The original pieces were about the size of a large grapefruit but we now have many larger broodstock pieces.
These pieces pictured above developed as little buds with only a few polyps that drop off naturally via asexual reproduction. After aproximately a year of growth, they form a sphere with no bare base or underlying dead spots. We kept the spheres in a basket to see if they would fuse together and form a larger mass that would be easier to frag, but instead they kept their shape! This LPS is quite remarkable and to see it grow from a tiny bud, no bigger then an eraser head, to golf ball size is fascinating.
Don’t expect to see these oddball specimens for sale since they are a rare phenomenon that we have no control over, resulting in a very limited amount of them.
