Granule of Dried Food for Suns?

[herring_fish]

I don't have any experience with sun corals and know nothing about them. I am developing a small zooplankton farm in the garage that I hope will, in part, satisfy this and other coral's need for little critters.

While I have been waiting for it to come back on line, I have been spot feeding phyto-paste to another coral and noticed that the suns have been opening in response to it. Spot feeding of the suns normally follows with dead rotifers from a syringe.

One day, I fed the sun polyps some granular dried food that is about the size of beach sand. The sun polyps close down around the food immediately on contact. They close and deflated completely in about 3 or 4 seconds.

I don't know if this is a great feeding response or a negative reaction. The food seems to stay inside the polyps after they fully re-open, which takes about 5 or 10 minutes.

If this is a positive response, could I feed inexpensive dried squid granules as a primary and preferable way of spot feeding these carnivores corals?

Instead of hoping that they capture a small part of a dissolved cube of zooplankton as the stream of food passes, I can see that each polyp is well fed once or twice a day with little waste that adds to the nutrient load of the tank.

Or.....Do I just have a profound miss understanding of how these creatures feed?

 

[MarineSniper]

I don't know, exactly, what you mean by "deflated" after feeding. Normally, they'll be even larger after eating. There shouldn't be any food showing after they reopen, either

I regularly feed my suns and dendros Fauna Marin lps pellets, with good results but don't use any other types of dried food. Most are too hard for these type coral to easily digest. I would suggest vitamin soaked mysid, Cyclopeeze or the like until your live food is online. My winter project this year is a mysid propagation system, to eliminate 90% of the "dead food" that goes into my tanks

 

[herring_fish]

For me "deflated" is just like when it is at it's least open condition, like at the worst part of the day or when it first comes from the local store. It closes down in just a few seconds.

My spring project ...last year has gone a year and a half. I started out fast and got the hard parts done in about 3 months but I have so many other things to do.

I'm building a robot controlled plankton farm that I am building in my garage. I really hesitate to give you a link to this because I work on it so infrequently. I have it running over my desk and only have to install 3 sensors that already work. Instead of working on it, I am building a light fixture for my ATS dump bucket.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1970938&highlight=plankton+farm&page=4

 

[MarineSniper]

I don't know that it's the food causing that but they shouldn't close up like that after feeding. They'll close over the food for about 5 minutes and then generally open up, more full than before. I would see what their reaction is to mysid, that should show if the reaction is negative due to that food. I have about 500 heads of suns/dendros and have never seen that reaction, but you could have some that do, for some reason. I do know that most pellet foods are too hard for their rudimentary digestive system to break down. Have you seen any of them disgorge anything?

On the mysid propagation, it's definitely a bit labor intensive. I'm in the process of collecting the 14 tanks needed, along with lights, heaters and filters for them. I'll also need a running brine shrimp propagation system running beforehand to feed them. I'm hoping I'll be able to sell my excess mysid and break even on the monthly expense, eventually. At this point, I'm going through more than a pound of frozen mysis a month. I'd love to eliminate that much dead food in my system!

 

[herring_fish]

I had always thought about mysids as a luxury or a niche. I have been building my little farm to raise all of the sizes of rotifers, brine shrimp and pods. I looked at raising mysids and thought that it was too much for me to tackle.

Why do you like mysids so much? I ask you because I can't argue with success. I only have one clump of suns so far and am feeding cyclop-eeze and phyto paste, along with brown powder, Reef Bugs and BlackPowder from Marc Weiss.

Do you polyps like that particular sizes?

 

[MarineSniper]

I don't think Reef Bugs is really a food. I prefer the mysis, primarily due to their size. They're just right for suns and dendros and have more nutritional value than brine which are only a vehicle to carry the vitamins you either soak or gut load them with. I use the medium Fauna Marin pellets although they could probably take large. I target feed everything with a Sea Squirt with the tip shaved back, to facilitate larger foods and it works great. Too hard to control dispensing with a regular baster, imo

 

[herring_fish]

One of the main focuses of my plankton farm is to do a lot of work up front (actually too much, I have found) so that the system will run with a minimum of maintenance. This approach is designed to fit my personality. I've learned what I can and can't do well.

That is why I passed on mysis shrimp after seeing the available methods a few years ago. What I read is probably an outdated version of the one that you are pursuing and I am sure that there have been improvements over what I read back then. Do you still have access to the link that you are going by?

Once I understand it better, perhaps I could figure out how to automate it, maybe not. I'm just not good at keeping up with involved ongoing processes. I wish that I was. That is also why I use phyto paste instead of growing fresh phyto . I couldn't keep up with the splitting and cleaning.

On the other hand, I just read about a method that uses a 30 gallon tank and in part, simply uses a power head to blow the mysis toward a screen partition that turns back the adults to prevent predation. It probably has a much lower yield than your method.

I should have plenty of brine shrimp to feed so I would love to devise a system that could work in my vertical tubes.

Since you fully understand what you are preparing for, have you found any ways to simplify your planned process? Do you plan on feeding adults or juveniles?

 

[Zeyko]

It doesnt matter if i place a sun coral in a spot of high lights?

 

[herring_fish]

I don't know. ....but I never let that stop me.

I have only had mine for a while. I know that I talked to someone that saw fields of them, in the ocean, that were right out in the sun light. Several of the best tanks that I have seen pictures of have them all right out in the open. These were some very well fed tanks with automatic feeding systems.

in the old days, I heard that many people keep them in caves and below under hangs. I put mine in the open but under the center divider to get some shade.

They typically come out at night in the ocean because they can normally catch more food at night, when there are higher densities of plankton and lower currents. (I think)

They can be trained to come out in the day time. I have had some success with that already.

I think that if you can feed them enough, they will do well in the light. A well fed sun coral is covered with flesh between the polyps so algae can't take hold.

I would think that it is all about the amount of quality food and the frequency with which you can give it to them.