Sun coral not opening fully

Tubastrea corals are Non Photosynthetic, meaning they have to be fed. Each head must be fed. Lighting is of no consequence to them at all, meaning they CAN be in high light or low light. A lot of people think they HAVE to be in low light, which is not the case. The best thing for them is to have them in moderate to high flow and feed them a few times per week.
 
Basically what I have done every night since i got it is stick a gatorade bottle with the bottom cut out over top of it, then squirt bbs and marine snow on it and keep a current with a turkey baster. It looks like its shrinking
 
That's a good way to feed it, though I'd stop the Marine Snow, it's garbage. Try frozen Cyclopeeze or frozen mysis shrimp.

Get it into a moderate to high flow area, see if this helps.
 
Well its a good thing I didnt buy a large bottle of it then. Now with the mysis shrimp, do I use the same bottle method? or do i use like a pair of tweezers?
 
Marine snow has little to no nutritive value unfortunately, the stuff is pretty much 99% water. With mysid you can use the bottle thing but it's messier, personally I'd turn off all the pumps and just slowly place the mysid onto the colony with a pipette or something along those lines.
 
Soda bottle makes a mess...use a feeding syringe, if its hard to reach you can attach some stiff tubing to the tip...I feed my sun polyps, dendro, and Duncan that way.....you can chum the water to get it to come out....
 
After awhile of feeding they start to come out at the same time every day. What I did to get them to start to open was turn my pumps low and add a few mysis. They would sense food is out and when the polyps are fully extended I just target feed. It takes awhile hopefully yours have the energy to feed if its been awhile.
 
Was it recently moved? Sun corals need to be fed at least twice a week. I noticed when I cut down on the feed she'll stay closed. I use reef snow to stimulate, then Piscine Mysis or Cyclo-peeze with a syringe.;)
 
I moved it off my frag rack like a week ago, the other night it opened up like I had never seen it before. It hasnt been like that since
 
I have had mine for 2 months. At first it seemed to die off a bit, then it seemed to strengthen and is now growing. The funny thing contrary to everything I've read, is that I have NEVER fed it. I tried at first. Would cover it in cyclopeez or mysis shrimp to try to induce a feeding response, but got nothing. I resigned myself to the fact that it would die in my tank. I didn't even see the tentacles for the first month. Now, when I look at it in the middle of the night it's tentacles are wide open. It's beautiful. Pink and orange. There must be enough stuff floating around the tank at night to support it.
 
I have had mine for a year now and +1 on the feeding. When I fed mine three times a week it was full and growing, but I grew tired of doing that and it started shrinking. Now I started feeding it again and it looks great. Just keep on feeding like you are doing and it will come around. I feed mine the same way with a gator-aid bottle, but I keep the lid on after I squirt food in. The sun coral feeds so slow otherwise
 
If mine is not out and I want to feed it i put some cyclo-peeze in the tank and it comes right out. Then I take some myosis shrimp that has been sitting in garlic and turn the power heads off and use a turkey baster to feed it. It will close up as you feed each head but after about 10 min you can feed it a second time.
 
Mine is acting a bit like that. It was opening fully until about 15 days ago, all polyps open most of the day but much more late night with long and fat tentacles. Now all the polyps are still opening, their mouths are pretty visible when feeding, but the tentacles (not the polyps) are much shorter. It seems like someone "trimmed down" them, they are much shorter in length although every polyp displays their tentacles, just not as long as they were. It now looks like they have a little "crown", it's actually pretty as well.
Is it possible that they don't extend the tentacles fully if there is enough offer of food already or if the polyps are already well fed? I didn't change anything in the feeding routine. The only difference that I've made in the last few days is a cleaner tank water - the levels of phosphates were pretty high (I wasn't using a deionizator in the first months...) and I've reduced them a bit using resin. There were no other changes in salinity, gravity, pH, KH, temperature (maybe one degree Celsius higher, it's the middle of the brazilian summer) etc. This coral is here with me for about 4-5 months.
 
I guess I still can't edit my posts, but here's a pic, taken about 90 mins after the lights were off:

sc011.jpg


As you can see, the polyps are quite extended but the tentacles are not. Also there are lots of new tiny polyps, can this also be the cause? I read that some corals when multiplying tend to look a bit different than they usualy do.
 
The tentacles are so small because they are not getting enough to eat. When I first get a suncoral and it hasn't fed in awhile or doesn't want to open up I use frozen mysis that I chop up a little bit. I also use a bottle to cover it. Feed it a few times, about 10-15 min apart and leave the bottle on it all night. It seems that even if the tentacles aren't able to pull alot of food into the polyp, just having the mysis sitting on top of the polyp for an extended period of times helps them absorb some nutrition. After a few weeks the tentacles will become much longer and you will find they open whenever you feed the tank, mine stay open most of the time now. I actually prefer the bottle method because my fish will pull food from the suncoral. I have to wait a long time after lights out to keep the fish away, then there aren't any fish awake to clean up the residual. If I use a bottle to cover the suncoral, I remove it the next morning and the fish clean everything up. I have one suncoral that is now so large I can't find anything that will fit it so I'm forced to turn the pumps off and feed with a syringe, I really don't like that. I also have baby suncorals popping up all over the tank that can't be covered. Your suncoral will be fine if you increase the amount and frequency of your feedings. I would personally feed it at least every other day for a few weeks and slowly cut back to twice a week. Once they are healthy you may be able to occassionally get away with one feeding a week but I have found long term they really need at least two heavy feedings a week. Good luck.
 
I feed it every day, with cyclop-eeze mostly. It used to be like this until 15 days ago so I'm guessing I was doing right... nothing has changed in the feeding routine since:

002ahx.jpg
 
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