show me your sun coral
- Thread starter nashorn
- Start date
Caleb Kruse
New member
Here's mine
edandsandy
Active member
Here's ours!
I would not say hard to keep - it just takes twice a week manual feeding (very small colony can be fed accurately by tweezers), cleaning and a good filtration and skimming - for a dissolved organics and a small particles.
Pretty hardy, IMHE - I wish, that the red mushrooms, xenia and neon green candycane could stand the same (they actually stood, in the same tank, but not so good).
Since end of April 2006, was:
is:
Just for fun, the red is chili coral, the yellow - sun coral (since Aug 06):
New, yellow sun:
Does anybody know who is who between tubastreas - is the high skeleton yellow T. aurea and the low skeleton orange - T. faulkneri or not? Any links to differential ID?
Pretty hardy, IMHE - I wish, that the red mushrooms, xenia and neon green candycane could stand the same (they actually stood, in the same tank, but not so good).
Since end of April 2006, was:
is:
Just for fun, the red is chili coral, the yellow - sun coral (since Aug 06):
New, yellow sun:
Does anybody know who is who between tubastreas - is the high skeleton yellow T. aurea and the low skeleton orange - T. faulkneri or not? Any links to differential ID?
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fishyfishy23
In Memoriam
Forget sun corals. Dendros are so much better they're out all day all night!!
Here are the two sun corals I purchased back in October. One of them was purchased as a "red" sun coral. It was from Aquatic Collection and looked pretty much identical to their photo at the time I got it.
Boring speculation on "red" sun corals...
It had a bright pink/red coenosarc and brilliant reddish orange polyps. It has faded gradually to what you see today. I have my doubts about any tubastrea being dyed. Typically, it's done to zoxanthellate corals that are bleached (forced to expell their symbiotic algae) and become pale or white in color. Tubastrea's color is not based on zoxanthellae--they don't have any--and I have never heard of them bleaching. So I'm not sure how one would go about dyeing a coral that is already so intensely colored.
I'm wondering if in "red" sun corals that fade over time, the culprit is diet. I expect they get a much more diverse diet in the wild, probably with a lot of crustaceans that have been eating phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are high in carotenoids, a set of pigments made by plants but responsible for bright colors in animals.
Carotenoids are responsible for red, yellow, orange, pink, and brown colors, so I wonder if diet isn't the reason a lot of sun corals change color after a few months in captivity. They exhaust what's stored in their tissues and when they don't get any more, the colors change. Since we feed meaty items, they probably aren't getting the same amount of carotenoids they get in the wild. This is one reason that the colors in some marine fish (firefish, some dottybacks, others) will fade if they don't get a good mixed diet in captivity. Maybe the same thing is happening in tubastrea.
That's my guess about what's going on with red sun coral, anyway. I'm going to hit the fish store and buy some meaty foods that are rich in carotenoids and start feeding them to see what happens. So far I've been feeding them mysis and I just added some krill to their diet. Krill sometimes have some carotenoids in them, but not nearly as much as some other foods I think. Cyclopeeze is supposed to be really high in some of the carotenoids, and there are several specially made foods to color enhance fish that would probably work. I'll see what I can find.
What specific items do you all feed your sun corals? If you have had them for a while, have you noticed any shift in color?
End rant...
Anyway, other than the color change, it looks healthy
It's grown two baby polyps since I got it and recovered from a lot of tissue recession.
And here's the black one, which is possibly T. diaphana. I also got it as four polyps and it's grown five new ones in two months! Wow!
I love my sun corals. I get a huge kick out of feeding them.
Boring speculation on "red" sun corals...
It had a bright pink/red coenosarc and brilliant reddish orange polyps. It has faded gradually to what you see today. I have my doubts about any tubastrea being dyed. Typically, it's done to zoxanthellate corals that are bleached (forced to expell their symbiotic algae) and become pale or white in color. Tubastrea's color is not based on zoxanthellae--they don't have any--and I have never heard of them bleaching. So I'm not sure how one would go about dyeing a coral that is already so intensely colored.
I'm wondering if in "red" sun corals that fade over time, the culprit is diet. I expect they get a much more diverse diet in the wild, probably with a lot of crustaceans that have been eating phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are high in carotenoids, a set of pigments made by plants but responsible for bright colors in animals.
Carotenoids are responsible for red, yellow, orange, pink, and brown colors, so I wonder if diet isn't the reason a lot of sun corals change color after a few months in captivity. They exhaust what's stored in their tissues and when they don't get any more, the colors change. Since we feed meaty items, they probably aren't getting the same amount of carotenoids they get in the wild. This is one reason that the colors in some marine fish (firefish, some dottybacks, others) will fade if they don't get a good mixed diet in captivity. Maybe the same thing is happening in tubastrea.
That's my guess about what's going on with red sun coral, anyway. I'm going to hit the fish store and buy some meaty foods that are rich in carotenoids and start feeding them to see what happens. So far I've been feeding them mysis and I just added some krill to their diet. Krill sometimes have some carotenoids in them, but not nearly as much as some other foods I think. Cyclopeeze is supposed to be really high in some of the carotenoids, and there are several specially made foods to color enhance fish that would probably work. I'll see what I can find.
What specific items do you all feed your sun corals? If you have had them for a while, have you noticed any shift in color?
End rant...
Anyway, other than the color change, it looks healthy
It's grown two baby polyps since I got it and recovered from a lot of tissue recession.
And here's the black one, which is possibly T. diaphana. I also got it as four polyps and it's grown five new ones in two months! Wow!
I love my sun corals. I get a huge kick out of feeding them.
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Thank you! Will keep my eye for them in LFS - may be some day they will have it.
My plain orange sun coral become more pale with time, and it is fed by mysis, pink bigger ocean plankton, grocery shrimp and red salmon.
I tried cyclop-eeze diet for more, than year - no mysis or other big food, for the babies around the chili coral (on the photo above). The color is more natural, pinkish-orange. Don't have uploaded photo yet.
It works, but feeding pigmented food (or additives) in significant amounts will increase cost of feeding drastically. Here the Cyclop-eeze is the most affordable, still, it bites. Anything better to try?
My plain orange sun coral become more pale with time, and it is fed by mysis, pink bigger ocean plankton, grocery shrimp and red salmon.
I tried cyclop-eeze diet for more, than year - no mysis or other big food, for the babies around the chili coral (on the photo above). The color is more natural, pinkish-orange. Don't have uploaded photo yet.
It works, but feeding pigmented food (or additives) in significant amounts will increase cost of feeding drastically. Here the Cyclop-eeze is the most affordable, still, it bites. Anything better to try?
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Thanks Dendro, that's what I was hoping to hear!
I picked up some ocean plankton and cyclopeeze. I know cyclopeeze is really good, I'm going to try to get the flakes too so I can feed it to bigger polyps without so much waste.
I haven't gotten anything else yet to try. I'm going to look into pelleted food for fish and see if anything looks good. And yes, foods with high natural pigment concent are usually more expensive. But if I can feed them to that one colony and get it back to the colors I purchased it with, I will be happy with that.
I picked up some ocean plankton and cyclopeeze. I know cyclopeeze is really good, I'm going to try to get the flakes too so I can feed it to bigger polyps without so much waste.
I haven't gotten anything else yet to try. I'm going to look into pelleted food for fish and see if anything looks good. And yes, foods with high natural pigment concent are usually more expensive. But if I can feed them to that one colony and get it back to the colors I purchased it with, I will be happy with that.
Qckwzrd
Member
Great infor guys. I feed my corals and fish mysis, plankton, cyclopeeze, squid, formula 1 flakes and diced shrimp from the fish market. I don't think there is a red suncoral. No one I've ever spoken to has had one stay red for a long period of time. Renex the red suncoral you had have your ever touched the skeleton and the color came off? How long did it take to change from red? Anyone know why the black suncoral color comes off when you touch it but the others don't?
