Feeding Suncoral
- Thread starter Ortheo
- Start date
ortheo, I've noticed that lets say you have a large mother head that starts budding out babies that are very small to feed and you only feed the mother head, the babies get nutrients from that "mother head" and will grow. At what point it stops and those baby sun corals can feed themselves I have no idea. I think the corals may share nutrients.
sufunk
New member
I agree. I have never even attempted to feed every head on mine, there are way too many. As long as youfeed the whole coral a good amount, each head will do fine.
I can never find the link, but there is a thread somewhere with Eric Borneman confirming that every head doesnt need to be fed. IME, feeding every single head is a myth just like it needing to be shaded.
I can never find the link, but there is a thread somewhere with Eric Borneman confirming that every head doesnt need to be fed. IME, feeding every single head is a myth just like it needing to be shaded.
As long as there is a good amount of connective tissue, no, you do not have to feed every polyp. Nutrients are transferred through the flesh, not the underlying skeleton. If you arent making the effort to feed each polyp, or cant get to some of the polyps, do feed very well so as to assure that the coral as a whole is getting enough nutrients.
I agree with sdguy that some of the branching sun corals/dendro that do not have tissue connected to other polyps may each have to be fed while other species that have tissue connected to each other may do fine because if they do share nutrients then if one or two polyps got food, they can share it among the others.
Only thing to worry about is if you have a large colony like lets say 20-30 heads, if only 2-3 get food, not sure if that is enough food to share with the rest of the colony.
jamokie -you could be onto something because Viper_930 also told me the same thing, that the coral share nutrients if there is connective tissue. Did you know because you read it or just from experience?
Only thing to worry about is if you have a large colony like lets say 20-30 heads, if only 2-3 get food, not sure if that is enough food to share with the rest of the colony.
jamokie -you could be onto something because Viper_930 also told me the same thing, that the coral share nutrients if there is connective tissue. Did you know because you read it or just from experience?
From experience, When I first got my tubastrea it had polyps on the bottom facing downward that were not connected by tissue. I could not reach these polyps to feed them, so I fed the polyps I could reach on the top and sides. The polyps on the bottom withered and died after a month or so. However my coral was fed daily and quickly grew new flesh which eventually spread back to the bottom, producing new polyps. Again, I cannot reach these new polyps to feed them, only the top and sides are fed, but now that the tissue connects them to the rest, the polyps on the bottom continue to grow and multiply. This may be anecdotal, but I believe its a reasonable conclusion to draw from my observations.
