Goniopora, what to do?

[Chris J]

So I was a bad aquarist and bought a goniopora as my first coral thinking it was a type of octocoral. Only after I got home did I realize this was not the case and since my LFS doesn't take returns of ANY kind, and I have no other reef keeping friends or associates, I did a bunch of research and tried to keep it. It was going along fine for a while, then the first of 2 disasters, my snowflake eel dislodged the coral and it fell damaging a couple polyps on one of "heads". Those polyps died but the coral was still opening fully and seemed fine, then the second disaster, I upgraded my powerheads and my Condy anemone went "walkies" on me and stung the same "head" killing more polyps. Now it seems like that head has an infection as I have witnessed more polyps dying and leaving behind what seems like a brown algae in the skeleton where the polyp used to reside. My questions are 1) Are the other heads of the coral in danger of contracting what the one head has as they are all attached to the same piece of rock in close proximity to each other? If so should I cut my loses and cut that head off? Is there any other methods to fix this issue? Ammonia-0 Nitrites-0 Nitrates-10

 

[Crystal A]

I got one as well almost toast right now. For me it was the darn clowns that did it! They had never hosted anything until I put the goni in the tank. They are quite hard to keep alive for a long period of time and usually once they start to die off its game over. I knew when I got it it was a hard one to maintain but I never considered that my clown would be its demise. Too bad they are a very pretty coral. Maybe someone else with a bit more knowledge can chime in.

 

[Chris J]

My clowns don't bother with it, although the snowflake eel still likes to pretend he is one of the polyps.