How should I feed a tongue coral?

[coral_reefer_25]

I have noticed my tongue coral puffing up at night (or sometimes in the mornings/early afternoon before the lights come on) and I read on the net that they do that to slough off mucus in efforts to catch food.

My question is how should I go about feeding it? I have a turkey baster, but I'm sure the force of "blowing" food at it will make it retract in a defensive way rather than grabbing what it can before the current takes it away. It will occasionally have a piece of food land in its tentacles, but the coral is about 7" long...one little piece of food doesn't seem like a lot for the entire coral.

Should I use some sort of tongs or is the occasional piece of food ok? (raw seafood from Angela's "fish mush")

This is perhaps my favorite coral and it has puffed up and moved about 3 times in the last 6 weeks. It still looks really good but I want to do all I can to prevent losing it.

 

[ct_vol]

Tongue corals are very closely related to plate corals... I happen to feed my plates every once in a while, but many people don't... I usually just grab a few brine or mysis shrimp and place them on their tentacles (with my hand)... I've also fed the larger one a peice of a silverside just to see if it could eat something that large (it did)... The biggest problem I've faced feeding them is other animals stealing the food... If you place it close to their mouth, they don't take long to ingest it... But it doesn't take long for a nassarius to come by and steal it, or for that matter any fish swimming by... So be sure to feed your others first... Raw seafood mush sounds like it would be a good treat to me... Hope this helps...

 

[coral_reefer_25]

Okay...that helps...now I just have to find some long feeding tongs...my stand is quite high, so to get to the tongue coral, I'd either have to stand on a chair or have some tongs. Now I have to find some sort of tongs that are longer than 6".

It sucks to be vertically challenged.

 

[Sk8r]

Cyclopeeze works.

 

[coral_reefer_25]

There is cyclopeze in the fish mush...but I watch closely when I feed the tank....not much, if any of the cyclopeze makes it to the tongue coral.