How much light for your sun coral

[LOTUS50GOD]

I got a sun coral last night...
Put it in the tank when the lights were on... had no polyp extension even during fish feeding...

Then the lights went out....

All the polyps opened... I made a mix of roe and mysis and fed...
This morning, no polyps were open...

A friend of mine has one that is open all the time...

I moved him this morning under a ledge. It gets good flow, and is shaded from the 1200w of lights over the tank (I have SPS).

How much light is ideal for a sun coral?

 

[dendro982]

Me again, if you don't mind. Seems like most others are on vacations .

Many people are keeping Tubastrea under very high light without problems, together with sps (link to pdf 13MB, but it's worth it).

If water quality is not the best, algae starts to grow on the dead parts of skeleton at the base.

Low light or no light helps with this. I have tubastreas in low light tank (110W PC, 90g, 2 ft deep) and in no light 5g tank, no difference. They open, when the food is available and maybe 40 min before the lights are off. The night polyps extension is the fullest, comparing to the daytime.

Tubastreas are nocturnal, but dendrophillia (as I had read) is open all day long.

In this article the invasive tubastreas are described in shallow waters of Brazil, 10-50 cm deep ( 4-20"), there they are exposed to the sun, temperature swings and dessication. Quite interesting.

 

[LOTUS50GOD]

You are the man.. thanks for all your help