My girlfriend impulse-bought a yellow flower pot for me a few months ago. I've done a LOT of research on them online, and there isn't much that's terribly recent. Here's what I've accumulated and what's been my experience so far with this coral:
(My sources and timeline may not be totally correct, but my summation of the aggregate information I believe to be fairly accurate)
From what I've read in posts and articles ranging from the late 90s to about 2006ish, flower pots were considered impossible to keep for more than a few months. We didn't know their feeding habits, or even what they really ate.
Posts and articles in the mid 2000s started quoting luck with keeping these corals for up to a year where they would look great, but they would still suddenly die very rapidly. I surmise from what I've read that, at that point, nearly all flower pots were still wild caught at that point.
But around that same time, there was an article written quoting some research that had been done stating that dissection of flower pots had shown mostly phyto and other small plankton in their bodies, suggesting this was the majority of their diet. This would also seem to correlate with my other findings that flower pots tend to grow in nutrient rich waters in dirty pools and areas where rivers dump into the ocean, as well as with other indications that they tend to prefer lower intensity lighting. (This is contrary to what the link Mcvivor posted above- that's probably the only place I've read that said Goni. sp. requires "PERFECT water conditions", but Liveaquaria may have meant just the "True Red" variant they are selling, which I don't recall ever reading about.)
Someone also wrote an article about this time stating that he was starting to have luck with flower pots through heavy feeding and heavy skimming and that subsequent generations of flower pots appeared to be doing better than previous generations.
Googling results for new articles and posts after about 2007ish with new information regarding flower pots seems to taper off.
(The following paragraph is purely hypothetical on my part)
Now, since they HAVE been in aquariums for some time, my guess is there are more and more aquacultured specimens being traded and sold. As with the case of acros and other previously deemed "impossible to keep" corals, subsequent generations of aquacultured corals have generally become easier to keep because either, or because both, husbandry becomes better understood, or/and "mutations" of species surviving in tanks make them better suited for survival in our tanks due to natural selection. This fits with the fact that I have recently seen quite a few flower pots sold at my LFS, and heard several customers talking about them, but have not heard from these same people any of the "impossible to keep" stories that used to circulate so widely with personal stories about how that person's flower pot died. However, I have not seen any "recent" posts or stories about how someone's flower pot has died, only posts saying that "They are impossible to keep" with no information that the person has actually had one themselves- apparently just regurgitating what they have read with no experience in the matter, perpetuating what may just be old information about the coral.
Full disclosure: I have only had my flower pot for about 3 months, so I am still well within that "they only last for a few months to a year". BUT she has doubled in size, and her polyps have grown to nearly 3 inches at full extension, and I continually notice new polyps growing from between mature polyps. So maybe she will still die unexpectedly within a year, but I'm still keeping her, and keeping my hopes up.
How do I care for her? I actually keep her under a rock outcropping that is 16" below 14k 150W MH for 7 hours a day, so she gets only indirect light. She gets low, non-laminar flow. My water is 79-81 degrees at 1.025 SG with bi-weekly 10% changes.
As for feeding, I'm still figuring this one out. I skim heavily - I only have a 60 but I have a Remora Pro with a Mag Drive 3 that's rated to 120GPH and I have a very light bio-load so far- only 5 Yellow Tail Damsels, a hermit, a Spider Conch, a Black Long Spine Urchin, snails, one Paly colony, a Red Feather Duster, and some small various hitch hikers. So for about 3 months, I was feeding VERY heavily- turning off all flow and target feeding about 1 teaspoon of phyto per day. But just 2 weeks ago, I started seeing the signs my tank displays of an upcoming algal bloom (more tiny feather dusters growing, some of these little white plants that I can' describe that come with lots of nutrients in my tank, and a few other things), so I have cut back my feeding to half a teaspoon of phyto every other day, and the signs of too many nutrients in my tank have started to level off and should start receding. My flower pot has not acted any differently since the changed feeding cycle, but honestly, it's still too soon to really make anything of that observation yet, IMO.
My verdict? Despite searching a number of times for information regarding flower pots, there's not a whole lot of recent or definitive information on caring for them- nearly all of what I've read has been old or anecdotal. Mine is doing fine so far, but my care has only been based on what "everyone has said" about them, not any real, empirical data from studies, sans the dissection finding the phyto. So I'd say "it's a risk to buy them, I've probably only been lucky so far with mine."
NOTE: There are actually two types of flower pots, one with 12 "tentacles" per polyp and one with (I think) 24 tentacles. I have, and am writing this post with respect to, the 24 tentacle specimen. As for I am writing this on break at work, I don't have the time to find the names and go into what I've read between the two types except for the 12 tentacle type is supposedly easier to care for, and I wrote this post with the 24 tentacle specimen in mind since I've found that to actually be sold much more commonly than the other type.
Again, this is all just my experience. HTH.
