Can you overfeed a sun coral?

[jamiep]

I got a suncoral yesterday and it's not the best shape with tissue recession. It is open for food quite often...but is it possible to overfeed one of these corals and give it too much food?

 

[dendro982]

They will spit it back, some time later. And look after that, as they had hangover.
You may feed smaller doses, every day. You can estimate the "stomach" volume by the size of the polyp. It should recover in a months, at least partially.

My lemon yellow sun coral (T. aurea?) has peculiar requirement: at beginning it couldn't tolerate the homemade sea food blend, that is used by pale orange-pink sun (T. faulkneri?). But feeding the whole food, like mysis, Ocean Plankton, Pacific plankton, some brine shrimp for a taste, worked well.

Maybe try the frozen crustaceans from LFS?

 

[jamiep]

Yes mine is a T. aurea. Currently feeding mysis and cyclopeeze for the smaller polyps aswell as baby brine when I hatch it. Havn't observed any spitting yet but can see the tissue on the mend again already!

 

[Tennyson]

I've been overfeeding my suncoral. It always throws it up, I have to stop feeding so much.

Just a quick question, when it spits up the food, is it completely emptying out its stomach? Therefore, making it slowly starve?
And do each of the polyps have their own stomachs? Or does the whole colony share the food? Because some of the polyps are throwing it up, and others eat it all.

 

[LOTUS50GOD]

From what I have seen... One polyp can feed the connecting polyps in the colony.

 

[slcw]

u may find this useful

http://www.sgreefclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=27786&st=20

 

[Henryreef]

i didn't know that you could overfeed a sun coral. It seems when i feed mine it is like a bottomless pit, always wanting more. How much do you need to feed for it to spit it back up?

 

[Tennyson]

Mine gets full very quickly. After maybe 4-6 pieces it will throw up

 

[Dustin1300]

This is interesting, maybe that is why mine has never fully recovered from the LFS...I figured more would not be bad as long as I was not polluting the tank!

 

[Dustin1300]

Oh...might add that Melevsreef.com has some good reference to feeding his sun coral! I like to promote his site when I can because he's helped many of us newbies understand lots of different things about the hobby!