Sun coral questions.

[Heatherabel3]

I see a lot of people with the pink sun corals that are out in the daytime a lot. My yellow ones are never open during the day. Is this common between the two? Is there a way to get it to stay open during the day? I am also having a hard time getting a feeding response out of it. When its open, its out and seems happy but never really seems like its grabbing the food. I am feeding brine shrimp.

 

[toothybugs]

I had to resort to cutting the current and drizzling them with foodstuffs to get them to come out. It takes time and patience but they'll get there.

You may speed things along by pulling them in to a tupperware container to isolate them and get some clam juice or something in the water around them to tempt them out. Of course, feed them at such a time. They will eventually get used to your feeding time and be out more.

 

[noy]

I see a lot of people with the pink sun corals that are out in the daytime a lot. My yellow ones are never open during the day. Is this common between the two? Is there a way to get it to stay open during the day? I am also having a hard time getting a feeding response out of it. When its open, its out and seems happy but never really seems like its grabbing the food. I am feeding brine shrimp.

Its not so much its pink vs. yellow - there are different species of "sun corals". "Dendro's" referring to species in the genus dendrophyllia are usually opened during the day. Common names for these are fathead dendros, firecracker dendros, yellow cup corals - the common species are fistula and arbuscula.

The ones that don't normally open during the day are the Tubastraea genus of which there are 6 species. These will open during the day if they sense there is food in the water column. A "smelly" food like angelfish food (some portion of it) will get them to open. I call these prompter foods.

When I feed, if the polyps are not opened, I will put 1/4-1/2 cube of an angelfish food in the tank and wait 15 minute for the sun corals to open up. If you feed with brine/Mysis, you can do the same with the "juice" from the cube and just spray a bit on the coral and wait.

If you start doing this at regular times - they will eventually start opening up at those intervals.

 

[laga77]

Please lose the brine shrimp. They are not very nutritious. Feed the coral meaty foods like mysis, ocean plankton, squid, and clam. IMHO, the best thing I ever did was to start feeding my corals black worms and white worms. Nothing can compare to the feeding response of a live white worm wiggling on top of a closed Sun coral. Right now feed whenever the heads are open. Then start feeding at the same time everyday and hopefully the corals will start learning when feeding time is.

 

[noy]

Please lose the brine shrimp. They are not very nutritious. Feed the coral meaty foods like mysis, ocean plankton, squid, and clam. IMHO, the best thing I ever did was to start feeding my corals black worms and white worms. Nothing can compare to the feeding response of a live white worm wiggling on top of a closed Sun coral. Right now feed whenever the heads are open. Then start feeding at the same time everyday and hopefully the corals will start learning when feeding time is.

Think I'm going to disagree with you there.
I now feed about 80% brine shrimp and use Mysis and other foods stuffs for supplementation. I used to do about 50-50 but have gravitated towards a more brine shrimp dominant diet. Not sure what you mean by nutritious. These are fairly rudimentary organisms and protein is protein. I am not convinced they need "nutrition" in the form of vitamin/amino acids (or what not) except as occasional supplementation.

They are not marine fish. If you feed regularly the biggest enemy you will have is gut rot (undigested food starting to decay inside the coral) - that will be from dense foods. These corals don't have sophisticated digestive schemes and what I find is that they take in and process brine shrimp readily and I haven't really seen any adverse effects from a brine shrimp dominant diet. I have a few colonies which actually have been fed almost 100% brine and they are growing.

IMO, this goes for pretty well all Tubastraea, including micranthus (black), Fistula's and Arbuscula's.

 

[laga77]

Think I'm going to disagree with you there.
I now feed about 80% brine shrimp and use Mysis and other foods stuffs for supplementation. I used to do about 50-50 but have gravitated towards a more brine shrimp dominant diet. Not sure what you mean by nutritious. These are fairly rudimentary organisms and protein is protein. I am not convinced they need "nutrition" in the form of vitamin/amino acids (or what not) except as occasional supplementation.

They are not marine fish. If you feed regularly the biggest enemy you will have is gut rot (undigested food starting to decay inside the coral) - that will be from dense foods. These corals don't have sophisticated digestive schemes and what I find is that they take in and process brine shrimp readily and I haven't really seen any adverse effects from a brine shrimp dominant diet. I have a few colonies which actually have been fed almost 100% brine and they are growing.

IMO, this goes for pretty well all Tubastraea, including micranthus (black), Fistula's and Arbuscula's.

Noy, you have had great success with your Sun corals. I am not about to argue with you. I have been building up my NPS collection over the past couple of years and have done things differently. On the average I feed 3 out of 4 nights, sometimes less. Sometimes, especially with a new coral, I feed more. They tend to want to feed more coming from the LFS. My only guess is that they have not been fed enough. I have read about gut rot many times but never have I seen it, and I am the one feeding heavily. When feeding worms it is difficult to spread them out across the coral evenly. There have been times when a large clump of worms goes into a single head. No problems with gut rot. I have never seen a coral expel food either. What I do see is after a large feeding the coral will stay closed for a period of time. In fact, most of the Sun and Tube corals will close up, sometimes for days sometimes for weeks. It is almost like a feed/grow cycle. They always open back up.