Urgent SUN CORAL

[blackheart]

Ok for all you that just can not get yours to eat no matter what. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

Here we go: Get your self a five gallon bucket put in two gallons of your tanks water (do a water change) into the bucket. Now add a power head (nothing to crazy but enough to get the water moving. then add you sun coral. Please make sure that it is not getting blown around by the current. Now first add some cyclopeeze, maybe oyster eggs, and some squid juice. You will not need any large meaty food items yet. Let you sun coral sit in here for about an hour- hour and a half. then take it out of the feeding bucket and put it back into you tank. (oh yeah do this at around ten or eleven at night). Do this once or twice a week for about a month. (although it should only take a couple weeks).

Once you start to get a responce from this coral. You can use the same mixture to get the polyps out in your own tank. Once you see the polyps extend for a couple nights in a row then you can start to feed larger pieces of food. Just remember that if you try to feed it to early it will not respond well because you could scare it into resession.

The main thing you are trying to do with this is to let your coral know that when it smell this mixture we spoke of that it is time to put its polyps out and try to feed. When it starts to get stronger it will reform its neumatocytes which will allow it to grab on to larger pieces of food.

So i think that is good to get you guys started if you have anymore questions please ask. Also, please let me know how this works for you.


another thing: dont ever put your suncoral on sand. keep it on a hard surface aka rock.


And so you know most of these red sun corals are dyed. If anyone has a true red i would love to have a frag. Last time i got one after a year it turned yellow. I found the destributor who sold it and asked what was happening. She said if i wanted it to be red again then i should dye it. ha ha

Good luck all

 

[2revup]

another thing: dont ever put your suncoral on sand. keep it on a hard surface aka rock. i have always been told put it on the substrate.

so thn it should be on the bottom of the tank but on a rock? why?
I will try your trick, just need to buy some more salt and some more fresh seafood.

Thanks

Brad

 

["Umm fish?"]

I doesn't matter if it's on the bottom or not. Tubastreas have a hard time ejecting sand out of the polyp tubes if it gets in there. That said, all three of mine are on the sand at least a little.

 

[blackheart]

what Umm, fish? said is correct. Anywhere there is sand in polyps you will have prooblems. It doesnt matter where the coral is in the tank. However if the skin of the coral is under the sand it will die causing ressecion which is never good. So if I where you i would keep it off the sand.

The reason people say to keep these in the shade is because algae will grow where detritus settles so if they are in the light have them in high flow, and clean them off with you turkey baster every once in a while. In the wild they grow in the dark upside down under incredible flow. This way nothing settles on them. Upside down would be best however you would need a lot of glue.

PS: all the colonies that have started growing in my tank are on the underside of over hangs and rocks

 

[2revup]

It is in a very high flw area, where the 2 PH meet so its getting the best flow in the tank i would say (that is not directly infront of the power head, but the most natural flow i would say) I do have a sand sifting goby that does like to put some sand on the coral but i always brush this off.

 

[blackheart]

I would say then you have found you answer. If I where you, (which i am not), I would get that coral away from the sand sifting goby. I have seen sand sifting gobies, and jaw fish kill many LPS by spreading sand on them and bothing them to the point where they dont come out and then starve to death.

 

[one8thscale]

When I got my first sun coral it opened at night for one week then decided not to open for while. Well it did respond to food by elongating but the polyps never opened. Couple of weeks later it released little buds that made new baby sun coral. Oh and my jaw fish got eaten by one of my acans that was on the sand. I guess it was tired of it being sanded. Same acan ate one of my snails too. Killer acan I guess.

 

[Qckwzrd]

I'll be moving my suncoral from the sandbed ASAP. My Goby doesn't put sand on my suncorals, but he does to the plate coral. It just moves it right off and chills.

 

[Gordonious]

Are many people in this post not native speakers of English? You guys are confusing me.

"After that once of twice a week shouldd be fine" you mean once or twice a week?(sounds like a small number to me)

"I have four for several months" have had? You mean you tried them and they died with in several months, or that you still have them.


I figured my sun wouldn't open for a couple of days in my tank, but one polyp started opening up while I was acclimating it in a bucket and the rest opened after 5 minutes in my tank. I would think this is a good sign and perhaps it just smelled a lot of food in my water? I do have gorgonians and feed pretty often.
Is it possible at all that they would open when they are super hungry or not liking the water or could this only be a good sign?

 

["Umm fish?"]

I think you're probably fine.

 

[blackheart]

for timmy