How do you 'train' your sun coral to come out during the day?

[LOTUS50GOD]

My orange sun coral only shows its polyps about 45-60 minutes before the lights go out.

I have the sun coral in the shade to prevent any algae from growing around the coral. I also have tangs, so I dont want to encourage them to pick around the coral.

Dendro.. feel free to reply ...LOL...

 

[dendro982]

Good! Then I'm here
You see, I sticking around and trying to give any information I have, from own experience or links to the other people posts. And generally expect others do the same for me. Acting as a friendly shoulder too.

I see what amount of non-photosynthetic corals and fine filter feeders is sold in LFS, and comparing this to the amount of published on forums experiences with them. Only a miserable part of the total amount. More information is shared - the faster will be progress. This forum can serve as a kind of non-official data base for non-photosynthetic corals and fine filter feeders keepers, I could use help too

Back to the topic.
My sun corals (T. faulknery. T. coccinea, T. aurea, same but branching, T diaphana, Cladopsammia gracilis) are not trainable, but react on the presence of the food in the water. I had a big fish (~11"), that had to be fed trice daily. While sun corals were fed twice a week, they were and are opening each time after fish feeding, within 15 min. But this is a low light tank, maybe it matters.

 

[LOTUS50GOD]

My tank gets fed 2-3 times a day, so there is always something in the water... I also have my 24 hour automatic dosing of phyto, and rotifers. My last feeding is of all my lps around 9pm.. so its not a big deal to feed the sun coral too.

Anyway, I have 1200w of MH over my 340. The sun corals are shaded under a ledge that gets decent flow going past it.

The problem is I love the look of the sun coral and when people come over, I want to show it to them... but 99% of the time it looks like a orange branches with nothing coming out of the top.

I would like my suncoral to feed all day

 

[dendro982]

Is it branching or ball? Just curious. Tubastrea, except the black ones, is usually ball shaped, no branches. Although I have the branching analog of Tubastrea aurea (lemon yellow sun coral), I can't find anything about its identification.

The open all day sun coral: I had read that Dendrophyllia (relative of Tubastrea) is open all day long, and is much larger (firecracker kind) and even hardier. It should be readily available, but very few heads cost here $150 vs. $40 for full-grown Tubastrea colony.

Here and here are photos of my tank, all are daytime shots. Another "but", apart from being the low light tank, it is likely fed too well.

On the bright side, if the Daniela Stettler has them open in sps tank under metal halides, there is a good chance for your coral too.

Those, who "trained" tubastrea, described it as a feeding on schedule, always in the same time.
HTH

 

[LOTUS50GOD]

Well how often do you feed yours?

Mine get fed every night..

Do you think not feeding them for a few days, then feeding during the day will change their schedule?

BTW.. mine are the ball type... there are 4 golf ball size colonies on one rock.:rollface:

 

[dendro982]

When I had sun corals only in a good health,they were fed usually twice a week, in hot summer months - once a week (they don't like that, but recover later). They snack on the leftovers of the fish food and other corals food too, of course.

Starving, with sharp edges and those with tissue recession, that I bought much later - trying to feed every day or every second day, but in very hot weather have to limit feeding to twice a week.

I don't think that not feeding them for a few days changes anything, maybe just feeding during the day, as you planned, will do the trick.

One more thing: if they were open to feed, and were not fed - they start to close, and starting feeding during this time is difficult, they open very reluctantly. In about 1 hr later they will be more responsive.

 

[LOTUS50GOD]

at 6am they are open so I am assuming they are staying open all night.... My water parameters are getting better too... so maybe that is why they were staying in before...(just got my tub of phosban )