How fast can Sun Coral thrive?

[Qckwzrd]

My frogspawn hit my blacksuncoral and I seen the white skeleton, after 4 days I can see i starting to heal up. Since that has happened I now plan on having just suncorals in my tank and some zoas/polyps at the bottom. My orange suncoral has started to spawn, I see lil clear suncorals a few inches down the rock. I do shut my pumps off but its for about 10 mins. I'll try and shut them off for 30 mins and see what happens in a few months.

 

["Umm fish?"]

dendro--

From what I've read, most coral larvae will not settle on sterile anything. Oftentimes, they will come down and "taste" the substrate looking for some sort of chemical cues. Some it's a (low) growth of algae, some it's coralline.

But, I think that you are certainly correct about conditioning your corals the way the fish breeders condition their broodstock. If there's barely energy to survive there won't be energy for reproduction.

 

[dendro982]

I'll second that: feed coral well, and you can see on the photos above on what kinds of surfaces they settled in my tanks. But: I have well-fed tanks with nitrates and phosphates, the LR is covered by green film of microalgae. May be give them some rock, covered by organics?
And 15 min is, probably, enough. In 3-4 months you may see the new corals. If your colony is small, they may need time to grow the bigger colony (wild guess, my colony was reasonably big at purchase). Again, feeding helps.
Good luck!

 

[sufunk]

Dendro, do you have any pics you can post of your coral larvae attached after spawning?

The reason i ask is i think my sun spawned but not sure? I found about 5 small(smaller than a bb)orange dots on my LR. Looking closely i can see they are polyps of some sort but cant tell if they are suns or something else. They are way to small for my camera to get a remotely decent pic of so was hoping maybe you had some I could compare.

Thanks

 

["Umm fish?"]

I have some photos if you're interested:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=949593

That sounds exactly like what mine looked like. Very, very small orange dots. Mine were the same shade as the mother colony.

 

[sufunk]

Thanks!

Similar but i'm still not sure. Mine dont seem to have much of a base. When the polyps aren't out, these are just spots with nothing showing. When the polyps arent out it almost just looks like orange corraline algae

 

[Aliie]

Blakheart: That is just beautiful. I have one but it never seemed to open that far. It is one of my favorite corals! What if anything did you feed it that might be different from others?

 

[dendro982]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9171522#post9171522 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sufunk
Dendro, do you have any pics you can post of your coral larvae attached after spawning?

The reason i ask is i think my sun spawned but not sure? I found about 5 small(smaller than a bb)orange dots on my LR. Looking closely i can see they are polyps of some sort but cant tell if they are suns or something else. They are way to small for my camera to get a remotely decent pic of so was hoping maybe you had some I could compare.

Unfortunately, not. I had no idea about spawning sun corals, thought that the chili coral comes to the life.
But you can see them in another thread:
Orange bugs?
Will try to find later the first photos of mine - were as closed dots of yellowish color.
I just updated my thread about sun coral babies - they are making own colonies.

 

[dendro982]

Here is all I could find (not much, few photos - twice weekly water changes for sun, setting 90g tank, reanimating open brains...):
Apr 27, sun and chili first days together in Nano-Cube 6g:

Since first days of May sun was in own 1g feeding chamber, Aug 9 - chili was added to feed it up a little:

The last is close-up, the yellow dots could be already sun spawns, after 3 month ago contact in NC6.

After few days chili was moved back, because failed to feed. Sun babies are visible:

 

[NanoCube-boy]

What feeding chamber is that, dendro? Where does that locate in the tank? or is it seperately?

 

[dendro982]

The first days sun coral was in Nano-cube 6:

For a feeding I removed it in a separate container, 1g water bottle's bottom:

It took around 40 min each time, water cooled quickly, and I had to place this container in the bigger container with warm water, and add it, as it cooled. Too much troubles.

In a few days set separate pico tank, something around 1 g, with 50W heater and Red Sea HOB Nano-filter:

Set near Nano-cube, on a TV dinner table.
Coral was fed with flow on:

Then all water was changed.
Also very tiresome.

Then, when patience ended, moved sun into big 90g FOWLR tank with not reef-safe fish. Tank has oversized skimmer, micron sock, canister filter and refugium for water cleaning, anyway. Easier, but tank is deep, inconvenient to reach for a feeding with turkey baster.
Water has nitrates and some phosphates, microalgae started to grow between colonies.
Everything has own pluses and minuses.

Still looking for an easier way.

 

[NanoCube-boy]

Yea, it is tiresome when involving taking a coral out and feeding it. Too much hassel. I tried taking my coral out placing in a bucket, but it never open. I'm not sure why it doesn't want to open, even if I feed them some food juice. I waited over one hour and I say forget it. If it does feed like this, I'm just going target feed them. The only problem about target feeding is that other livestock steals food from it and nothing really I can do. So iono... I just feed it, but doesn't show any progress of growing or reproducing.

Well my corals barely reproduce. It's always been the same for long time. Several month, it looks a little more eccept the Sun Coral, it's always the same.

 

[dendro982]

You may try this:

Depending on the size of coral, it could be top of 2L coca bottle or even smaller. I used turkey baster to put food into the hut, and to make some food rotation there.

Why coral didn't opened when removed from the tank:
mine didn't opened under bright kitchen counter lights - 200W halogens, but after shading the vessel by newspaper - better. And you may try to make some flow in the bowl periodically - by baster.
BTW, it worked better right after purchase, a couple of months ago I tried to remove it for a more intense feeding - it reacted bad on handling and removing, almost not opened for a feeding, so I just left this idea.

 

[Aliie]

I've been following this thread and this idea rerally seems to be the best I have seen on how to target feed.

Is this going to be a semi permanante fixture until it gets established? Or is this just for a short acclimation period?

 

[dendro982]

New portion of spawns - these are the smallest I could find:

The smallest is below, ~1mm or 1/16". Cutting board's dots and a small hermit - for a size comparison.

Feeding, using top of the coca bottle, is a very common way to feed the sun coral. Tried to find links - plenty of them, seems that they are on another computer. You can get them easily by general web search on feeding sun coral, plus bottle or syringe.

The top of the bottle is placed over sun coral colony only for a time of feeding, then removed. It keeps food around polyps, some will drop on the bottom, make the float again and they will be catched by polyps.

Some screw on the bottle lid (stopper?), some have air tubing inserted into the drilled lid and use syringe to inject food inside.

If I remember right, mcox33 says somewhere in this long thread, mentioning many non-photosynthetic corals, http://reefcentral.com/forums/printthread.php?threadid=524097 , says that unused excess of food can be syphoned out before removing the cut bottle.

Other way is use the syringe with rigid airline tubing attached - it allows to go deep inside the tank, adding a short piece of curved vinyl air tubing allows feed polyps at the bottom of the colony. There is photo on the web somewhere - can't find it fast, sorry.

The simplest is to use the turkey baster, if feeding Ocean Plankton ((it's larger than mysis), or use the very long Kent "Sea Squirt" pipette, only it has too small opening for fine food, it can be replaced by cut plastic pipette from test kit (Nutrafin in my case):

But smaller sized baster or pipette or syringe is better, when you have to reach the bottom-facing polyps.

 

["Umm fish?"]

I've starting using airline tubing attached with an air hose to a basting syringe. It's working really well so far, I don't have to put my hands in the tank anymore, and the tubing fouls much less often than the Kent baster that I was using. Plus there's less resistence to the current, so I don't have to fight as much to keep it where I want it.

 

[NanoCube-boy]

I tried coco bottle method and when I feed it, the sand starts to spit up to the polyp. Also sometime, the food just float to the floor and the hole is hard to minuver to feed directly to the polyps.

 

[PONCHDOG2000]

i have had mine for about a month. it had three heads. i feed mine almost every day. i take it out of my tank and put it in a cup with my tank water and feed it mysis. about half a cube. it works pretty well.this way i don't have to worry about too much bio load in the tank. i tried feeding it in my tank and the other critters would go nutts. they would attack the sun coral and even pick the food right out of them. so i always make sure that it has completely "swallowed" its food before i put it in because my shrimp will take the food right out of them. so, in one month i have had two baby heads sprout on the frag of tree original heads. five total now. just some of my experience. good luck.

 

[dendro982]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9324204#post9324204 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by NanoCube-boy
I tried coco bottle method and when I feed it, the sand starts to spit up to the polyp. Also sometime, the food just float to the floor and the hole is hard to minuver to feed directly to the polyps.

Mmmm, my tanks is bare bottom...

I placed top of the bottle over the coral, used turkey baster to squirt food inside, and, when some settles onto the bottom, place baster into the bottle neck and squirt few times, aiming along the wall downward - the food starts moving in circles, from the bottom (feeding the bottom polyps) to the top. Few times, until all is eaten.

When I searched for a "sun coral feeding" at the beginning, some people siphoned the food leftovers out from the bottle top.

The other thing is a making a curved pipette for a feeding the side and bottom polyps: the rigid acrylic tubing from LFS, next size after the smallest, and the rubber sphere from dollar store, baby department, nasal cleaner (or something like that) - the short version of the turkey baster. The end of the tubing can be filled with the sand, heated over flame and curved at 90 degree, wide radius, or the food will stuck inside. Then cut to the necessary length, and attach the squeezing part.

Works just like the baster, for a feeding from the sides. Tried, it works. If push too hard - food will flow sideway from the coral. The middle part of the bottle can be used to limit this, and the wide top allows to insert the DIY curved baster.

It's a lot of frustration, until you will find the acceptable way to do that. My sympathy - was on your shoes too.

 

[NanoCube-boy]

yea, thanks for your tip... It's sound like a lot of work for siphoning or runing tubing just to feed it. That's really an hassel. I think I'll just stick with the regular feeding directly to the polyps. I doesn't reallt matter if the other steals it. Too much hassel.