will sun corals eat oyster eggs?

[Chad Vossen]

im thinking of a sun coral only tank. im going to have it in an area that gets little light and hair algae even has a hard time growing.

i was hopeing that oyster eggs would feed sun corals. would this work out? i was thinking of getin 2 electric scallops and my colony of sun corals in this tank.

its a 10 gallon tank, water changes will be regular useing the waste water from my display reef tank. (the water is just fine but i do water changes to keep algae growth at a minimal.) i figure i can feed heavy in the sun coral tank, run purigen and carbon, and i also have phyto plankton i can add as well.

the phyto should feed an army of pods


how does this sound? filtration is a simple hang on filter.

i realy want to see a 10 gallon tank with sun coral growing on all the rocks and scallops and even on the glass. that would realy be crazy. plus at night the electric scallops will have a nice light display.



i came up with this idea because my display is a 15 gallon volume reef tank (10 gallon display and 10 gallon fuge with lots of rock and sand and stuff) to keep up with feeding this sun coral, algae has taken off with the heavy feeding. algae is killing off the suncoral as well, and the flesh is all gone exept the polyps themselves. im hoping this change will help alot.



lol back on subject. WILL oyster eggs be a good food for sun coral. i can feed mysis on occasion but the sun coral i have doesnt seem to take mysis. the mysis hit the polyp and it sucks in and leaves the mysis to float away.

 

[Chad Vossen]

oh yea. i am thinking of oyster eggs for sun corals because it would feed the scallops and i also plan to have a type of sea fan or some kind of branching night time filter feeding coral lol.

 

[sufunk]

Not positive but i think oyster eggs are too small for a sun. Try frozen cyclopeeze, i know that its works very well.
If you feed them with the cup method , you dont have to worry about your water quality.
P.s.- if you chop up the mysis a little, I've found they are much more likely to eat it> Usually it is too big for them although i have seen pics of them eating whole mysis. I have never had luck unless they were chopped up and squirted thru a syringe into the cup.

 

[Chad Vossen]

thx. the cup trick wouldnt work if i wanted little sun corals all over the place in the tank.

i tried the cup trick. i think i scared the sun because it wouldnt come out at all.

what do they eat in the wild? i have amphnipods (spelling?) that are just everywere at night. i dont think the sun coral has caught any. my anemone seems to catch them at night. in the wild, are they eating dead food or stuff thats still swimming? they dont seem to have much of a sting.

 

[sufunk]

As hard as it is to feed them in the tank, I dont know how they get each individual polyp fed in the wild??? As long as they take to eat sometimes, seems like it would always get stolen in the wild.
The cup trick usually scares them the 1st couple times but they learn if you keep trying it. If you dont have a ton of rockwork you could still do a lot of little cups. They make some really tiny tupperware containers now, literally down to like 1"x1".

 

[Chad Vossen]

well i did a small research on cyclopeeze and it seems this would make the sun corals come out and its good for them as well. would i be able to keep Gorgonians fed useing cyclopeeze? i figure i can feed the sun corals a mix of mysis and cyclopeeze and any free floating food can be caught by the Gorgonian polyps. does cyclopeeze stay in the water for awile or will it settle quickly?

does my plan sound good for a tank? no skimmer, 1 simple hang on tank filter, most likly a powerhead as well. weekly water changes up to 50% water. this is all in a 10 gallon tank.


my plans will be delayed. my clown is looking sick and im gona have to use this 10 gallon as a quaranteen tank again.

 

[Chad Vossen]

maybe the coral is eating zooplankton. when i was at the beach, i took a cup of water and it had all kinds of tiny copepod like things in it. they were all free swimming and much different than the aquarium variaty. maybe the wild sun corals are constantly showered with plankton the size or smaller than newborn brine shrimp? because i dont think each night a billion small shrimp come out and offer themselves to the sun coral.

 

[sufunk]

I dont have much experience with gorgonians but i'm pretty sure that cyclopeeze is too big for them to eat.
I'll be interested to see how it works out but my guess is that multiple suns being fed in the open in a 10 gallon is gonna cause some water quality problems. I'd say your bet bet is to get some real small ones and still use the cup method. As much and often as they need to be fed, not using the cups will make the water bad quickly, imo.

 

[Chad Vossen]

by bad water do you mean high nutrients? high amonia and high nitrite?

im going to run purigen to reduce amonia and nitrite. plus weekly water changes of 40-50%.

can sun corals tolerate slightly dirty water?? or are they kinda like most other stony corals that need minimal nutrients.

im about to just scrap my idea and stick a few tube anemones in the tank lol.

 

[sufunk]

IME, sun's can tolerate slightly "dirty" water. My nitrates are usually 5-20 and my phosphates .5 and my sun has never had a problem.
I wouldn't scrap the idea, just reconsider feeding with a cup. If you do that, you will greatly reduce the amount of food in the water. Like i said before, they make some tiny containers that work great. I'd guess you could have room for at least 4 or 5 even in that small of a tank if you find some nice small suns.

 

[keckles]

It will respond to Oyster Eggs. I don't think anyone can tell you about consumption without some indepth examination.

Stick to larger foods such as Cyclop-eeze, mysis, etc. if you want to know for sure.

 

[Chad Vossen]

i have a sun coral already. its in my display. when i bought it, it was very skinny. within 24 hours the flesh was decaying. and almost all of it died off within a few days. all thats left is the polyps themselves. no flesh on the outer skeleton at all.

the store i bought them from had them sitting under halides and i realy dont think they were being fed

right now i havent fed them in awile. my damsel steals the food or the hermits will. i fed my pepermint shrimp to my anemone because it would always camp at the sun coral ripping food out. in a day or so im moving the sun coral to the quarantine tank and im going to start feeding it better

well i think what i wanted to learn has been mentioned. i have gained ideas from this thread. thanks! i will make another thread of this tank if it does work out nice.
i just remembered my boss has a white Gorgonian thats 50% dead so i might get it free

 

[finsurgeon]

I have a very large sun coral (about 120 heads) and it opens within a few minutes of Dainichi reef veggie pellets hitting the water. I don't think it eats any of the pellets, but it likes the smell. I've foung that its favorite food is krill tails or heads, fed by hand. It seems the whole colony is happy for 2-3 days if 10% of the heads receive a piece of krill, spread around the colony , and squirting the rest with cyclopeeze or Invertebrate Banquet when they are open. I've noticed the other sun coral in my tank (smaller) and the large black tubastrea also love the hand-feeding method and will thrive for days if some of the heads get a piece of meat while the rest get a dusting. It amazes me how big a meal they can take in if given the time, and the more often they get it, the more quickly they swallow it.

 

[finsurgeon]

I neglected to mention that feeding at night gets the most food to the coral with less stealing, and that I tend to just hand a peice of krill to my large cleaner shrimp or the fire shrimp to keep them busy if they are lurking to make a grab, while moving the hermits to a far corner sets them back quite a bit.