Black Sun Coral Reproducing

[laga77]

Found a baby Black Sun coral today. My other Sun Corals have been putting out babies for over a year now but this is the first Black one. I have two separate Black colonies, one have had for almost a year and the other 2.5 years. Here is a photo of the Black and one of the other Sun corals that I can photo. The Black is just under center where the rock meets the gravel. I feed live BBS, cyclops, cyclopleeze, mysis, plankton, and cut up black worms, clams, and shrimp to the babies.

 

[BarryV]

Found a baby Black Sun coral today. My other Sun Corals have been putting out babies for over a year now but this is the first Black one. I have two separate Black colonies, one have had for almost a year and the other 2.5 years. Here is a photo of the Black and one of the other Sun corals that I can photo. The Black is just under center where the rock meets the gravel. I feed live BBS, cyclops, cyclopleeze, mysis, plankton, and cut up black worms, clams, and shrimp to the babies.

Thats great having your black sun coral reproduce. My orange sun coral has babies
all over my tank. Keep up the good work.
Barry

 

[rt67ghy]

Wow! That's great. I'm waiting for that day.

 

[laga77]

Thanks, Keep them well fed!

 

[Qckwzrd]

Nice! How often do you feed?

 

[laga77]

3-4 times a week. I rotate between the foods listed above using a turkey baster/coral feeder, to spot feed. I try to spread the feedings so every head gets some food over time, but I know some in the back do not get fed and does not seem to effect the colony.

 

[laga77]

Found another one. This one is a little larger than the first one I found. It is in the back of the aquarium and really hard to see let alone photograph. I now have 2 Black Sun Coral offspring and 9 regular Sun Coral babies spread out around the tank. They are all doing good and growing. They get fed 3-4 x week.

 

[Nemato]

Cool!
What I observed with mine is that the babies were dark orange in the very first days and later turned black. Very interesting animal.
Keep feeding!

 

[Ron Reefman]

That's really cool. As a guy who is thinking of getting into the NPS corals, it's really good to hear that somebody can be doing as well as you are. Congratulations.

 

[laga77]

Thanks. For some reason I was attracted to Sun Corals when I got back into the hobby after a long hiatus. Probably because everyone else was into SPS and LPS, or the general opinion was they were too hard to keep. I like going against the grain. Good luck with the new NPS tank. The only advise I can give, is when it comes to feeding NPS corals, do not rely on broadcast feeding. I target feed everything with the pumps off. The Suns get mostly live worms and the filter feeders like the Blueberry and the Chilli get BBS, frozen rotifers, Cycle-pleeze, Oyster Feast.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I really appreciate the info. I already target feed 18 rockflower anemones. I was broadcast feeding them and they weren't doing very well. So I moved them to a shallow tank and started spot feeding with the turkey baster and over the last 6 months they all appear to be doing better. Most have doubled in size and a couple have more than tripled.

I fed live black worms to a butterflyfish I had that was a very fussy eater. After he rid the tank of all the aiptasia and majano anemones he was a good reef inhabitant for another 6 months and then started eating heads off LPS corals. At that point he moved to a FOWLR that a friend of mine has. But I'd guess they would be too big for most NPS corals, right?

 

[laga77]

I really appreciate the info. I already target feed 18 rockflower anemones. I was broadcast feeding them and they weren't doing very well. So I moved them to a shallow tank and started spot feeding with the turkey baster and over the last 6 months they all appear to be doing better. Most have doubled in size and a couple have more than tripled.

I fed live black worms to a butterflyfish I had that was a very fussy eater. After he rid the tank of all the aiptasia and majano anemones he was a good reef inhabitant for another 6 months and then started eating heads off LPS corals. At that point he moved to a FOWLR that a friend of mine has. But I'd guess they would be too big for most NPS corals, right?

f you are referring to the black worms, I have seen my Sun Coral babies, 1/8" diameter, take a full size blackwork with no problem. Also there are small heads on my Dendrophyllia colony that are the same size that take full size worms. I cut up the worms prior to feeding but sometimes it`s the big ones they grab. You can set up a white worm culture also. Very easy to do and everyone loves them too.