If I with my sun corals am not yet inflicting toothache, me again:
Have my sun coral for 1yr 3 months, had troubles with adapting to it's keeping, like how to feed it, if the food drops into the stones and clean up crew doesn't clean good enough, can it be exposed to air, when moving to feeding container and returning back, especially after feeding, when inflated, how the water quality is critical, debris accumulation on the surface and so on.
All appeared not so bad: now placing it, where can be easily cleaned around, it can be exposed to air, but after an year of undisturbed life in the tank don't like it.
Water quality tolerated without visible problems is up to 80 ppm nitrates and 0.5-1 ppm phosphates, but never had them all the time, these are worst that I measured. Usually 30-40 ppm nitrates and 0.25 ppm phosphates, and the salt is dissolved in tap water. I don't know if this is important, but I'm raising magnesium and calcium in newly prepared IO saltwater to the recommended levels, as described on Reef chemistry forum by R. Holmes-Farley.
Debris accumulation is just unaesthetical, and appears not on live coral flesh, but only on the turnicate between two colonies on the same stone. Same with chili coral, even if they are in high flow. My guess, that floating particles should be removed more efficiently from the tank.
FOWLR - mine is in what was FOWLR with messy, not reef safe fish, it was the only tank with skimmer and I just run out room in other tanks with corals. All OK, only debris (dirty layer on the surface) are unsightly.
Are they high maintenance or not
: it depends. I'm trying to feed mine twice a week, the guy on Coral propagation forum, Sun coral fragging thread feeds every day and has very good results. During the hot weather and when neglected, my coral was fed once a week for a may be 3 months, lost its fullness, but still not skinny, and spawns all the time.
Now I'm using the simplified procedure: ready frozen cubes of mysis or chopped in advance grocery seafood (just tear off a piece, thaw and ready to feed), squirting the content of 2-3 cubes onto coral, when it opens after fish feeding, with flow off, as soon as the food is mostly eaten, the flow is on again. An hour later I'm vacuuming the bottom, BB, daily actually.
The feeding of big fish (tassle filefish) takes more time and had to be done trice daily, feeding the lion, what refused to eat anything, but live prey, requires maintenance of the 18 gal feeders tank and bi-weekly trips to the LFS to buy the next group of feeders. Or symphillia with many mouthes to feed...
Comparing to that, the sun coral is low maintenance.
Who has the corals and fish, that are fed rarely, it may be considered the high maintenance.
In the first half of year, until I figured, what is not so critical, and relaxed a bit, my relations with the sun were very strained. Now it just lives together with others, with some additional drop of food once-twice a week. If once - before water change.
Could it rely on leftovers from the feeding fish - I don't think so, you see, theoretically the each mouth should get 1-2 mysis or ocean plankton shrimps, on practice for the colony on my photos, it should be 3-4 small cubes (size of frozen Prime Reef) or 2 big cubes (the biggest you seen). And the size should be fittable in the mouth, it means less, then for a big fish, and the small fish never receives the such big amount.
I didn't tried bloodworms, only the food that hopefully is of saltwater origin - mysis, ocean plankton, prime reef, marine cuisine, grocery shrimp and fish (raw, no preservatives). I had read, that some people fed the pellets - it didn't worked for me.
