Sun coral Feeding

[Cyclura]

Im confused, do i wait until this coral has extended its polyps to feed it or do i feed it whenever. It doesnt seem to take the food without its polyps extended and so far (2 days) that hasnt happened.

[TerraC]

Have you seen the coral out after dark? That's when they tend to be most active, you can train them to come out and feed whenever you like once you get it sniffing food.

a trick to get them to open up is to try a pinch of cyclopeze in the water or directed nearby with a turkey baster, they usually cannot resist. once they've opened up feed them some mysis. I have mine trained now to open up at 7pm every day (thats it's feeding time).

hope you get it opening up soon..

[Cyclura]

thanks for the tip, im fresh out of cyclopeeze (i never carried it anyways) but ill try with some meaty marine cuisine and marine snow.

[Seahorsedreams]

Do you have a picture Adam? It will be easier to have a game plan if we know the condition of the coral.

[Cyclura]

the only picture i have taken is of the entire tank on the tank journal forum.

http://www.talkingreef.com/forums/member-tank-projects/4061-my-29gal-seahorse-reef.html#post49937

and it has since plumped up and it doesnt look like its in bad shape. No exoskeleton showing or anything.

[Seahorsedreams]

Ya, it is skinny in that pic. I would put a cut bottle over the ones that could use a bit of work and "call" them out with DTs.

[Cyclura]

DTs? it still hasnt opened up. and now its starting to look sunken in.

[Seahorsedreams]

DTs?

It's a brand of live phyto. I'm just realizing it's not available eveywhere. I guess I have always been lucky to have it. If you put a "feeding cap" over the tubastrea and it will keep the phyto concentrated around the coral. I've also used frozen cyclopeez and a feeding cap so that it is not whisked away in the current. Or you could bring it out in a bowl with tank water twice and day to keep the feeding concentrated.

There are also frozen and dried phyto preparations but be careful not to foul the tank.

[Cyclura]

i put it into a bowl with marine snow and frozen brine and the darn thing STILL wont open up! and to top it off i saw that one head has already necrosed and melted off.

What do i do with this stupid thing? should i try BBS?

[doctorthompson]

We have two sun corals in our main display, a yellow encrusting one (Tubastraea faulkneri I think) and a black branching specimen (T. micrantha). My girlfriend actually takes them out of the tank and puts them in a bucket to feed them - they each get a full cube of frozen mysis shrimp every 2 or 3 days - and they've both been doing great since we switched to that feeding schedule.

I wouldn't bother wasting phytoplankton to coax yours to open, they don't eat phyto anyway. I've heard species of phytoplankton trigger an "open-for-feeding" type response from sun corals and other large zooplankton consumers if the particular species of phyto is high in certain nutrients or chemicals or something... but I've never had a problem getting them to open when I use a turkey baster and squirt in some of the water from the cup where the mysis cubes are thawing. After swishing the "mysis-smelling" water around I'll let them sit for a few minutes and both of them will usually be open even before the 2 cubes of food have finished thawing!

Marine snow is probably too small of a particle size for a sun coral, try mysis shrimp or medium-sized amphipods and see if it starts to perk up for you.


Pictures:
Here's a few shots of our yellow sun coral (http://flickr.com/photos/drthompson/tags/tubastraea) and some of my girlfriends photographs of the black sun coral (http://flickr.com/photos/korosion/tags/tubastraea) from a couple months ago... the yellow one has grown a lot, from baseball-sized to cantelope-sized.

[Seahorsedreams]

I guess i should clarify. The purpose of the DTs is not to feed the coral but to coax it to come out. It's something that is live, won't foul your tank and will get eaten by other things in the tank. I don't put food items in my tank without a good rinsing.

Eventually, when you feed the seahorses they will smell that and come out waiting for their turn.

What is the temperature of your tank?

[Cyclura]

What is the temperature of your tank?

75-76 degrees...it stays pretty stable.

[saxman]

the mysis juice trick works really well, but ya gotta be SUPER careful about adding it to your tank. if you try it, i'd definitely do it in a feeding cap, as suggested by Renee.

IME, IMO, Marine Snow isn't the best invert food around. it's almost all water. another food Tubastrea love is the Liquid Life Coral Food (the one with cyclopeeze). they also love frozen cyclopeeze, period. meaty foods are what they prefer. ours get mysis, live blackworms, cyclopeeze, etc and they do quite well on them. as you're finding out, the trick is getting them to eat. once you do, they love to be fed.

[Seahorsedreams]

I don't do the mysis juice anymore since I read about all the vibrio cultured in the thawed juice. Vibrio is everywhere, but that doesn't mean I wanna spoon fed it to my tanks. Especially where this is a seahorse tank.

[saxman]

i should also add that it only takes a couple of drops of mysis juice...but Renee is correct: mysis juice = vibrio, and vibrio is the #1 bacterial disease in SH.