I had my eye on a sun coral for ages, I love the way they look, my LFS had one for about 2 months, he seemed to be degrading, empty cups were appearing.

By this time I'd researched about low light/caves and spot feeding from every day to every 3days.

The next time I visited my LFS my mission was to rescue him and love him :rolleyes:

I've only had him for about 2 weeks, hes already growing new sections and his polyps are looking fuller.

I've included a pic, can anyone else give me any more tips on husbandry, I would be most great full.

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I really want one too, I just haven't made the leap. Sounds like you've got it down if it's thriving. Nice looking coral :up:

I really want one too, I just haven't made the leap. Sounds like you've got it down if it's thriving. Nice looking coral :up:

Thanks :) hopefully I can continue to give him a good home :)

cmay, sounds like you have it all worked out. because they are a non photosynthetic (non light dependant) coral, they HAVE to be fed, that is why a lot of people dont keep them (hassle of feeding). with regular feedings you should be fine.

keep doing what you are doing and before you know it you will not see any of that rock, and that will be how it is suppose to look. try very hard to feed every single polyp (even the tinyest ones), and you will be amazed at how fast it will regain its health. keep up the good work, HTH.

keep doing what you are doing and before you know it you will not see any of that rock, and that will be how it is suppose to look. try very hard to feed every single polyp (even the tinyest ones), and you will be amazed at how fast it will regain its health. keep up the good work, HTH.

Thanks for the reply, at the moment I poor food down a long tube, seems to work however I need to buy a longer tube and slightly bend the end so I can postion more acrutely.

I will post an update photo in a few weeks time on progress.

I use a turkey baster to feed mine. Some people place a dome over theirs while they eat so the other critters don't take their food.

I use a turkey baster to feed mine. Some people place a dome over theirs while they eat so the other critters don't take their food.

That's a good idea, I've started to notice my fish, crabs and anyone else seem to know my sun coral now gets an extra treat. (my crab hides around the corner and bounces as soon as I'm done :( )

You can buy feeding domes but I have heard that a cut off 2L bottle works as well as the commercial ones.

You can buy feeding domes but I have heard that a cut off 2L bottle works as well as the commercial ones.

I will try this today/evening, I do like the cheaper DIY solution :up:

I have noticed over the last couple of days my hermit crab is climbing all over my sun rock and seems to be picking at the polyps/cups.

My hermit crab looks like a rock; I will take a photo when I get home.

At the moment he seems to be doing no harm, but I’m slightly worried he may try to rip the polyps apart to get extra food.

Do you think I should remove him to my sump before he go’s to far and im not around to stop him.

it is probably just removing algae form the the rock, around the polyps. i would just watch it for a fewq days and see what happens.

it is probably just removing algae form the the rock, around the polyps. i would just watch it for a fewq days and see what happens.

I took your advise bobby and it seems your right :up:

I've noticed the colony growing and existing corals growing, I'm really pleased and feel quite proud :cool:

I've place the original rock in between other LR will they speared over.

they should spread over in time. i would just lean the other rock (the one that you want them to spread to) on a bare spot of the rock that the colony is on. this should get the result you are looking for.

they should spread over in time. i would just lean the other rock (the one that you want them to spread to) on a bare spot of the rock that the colony is on. this should get the result you are looking for.

Thanks, I've snuggled the rocks up together so hopefully in time they will spread.

sounds like you have these guys on the right path. good luck and keep us posted on their condition.

sounds like you have these guys on the right path. good luck and keep us posted on their condition.

Will do...... :up:

i finally got mine to start coming out during the day. i made a cave for it so its still dark but i like to be able to see them. i usually feed cyclopeeze or daphnia to get them to come out. do any of you sun coral owners do this.

I should be a new sun coral owner here before long, right Bobby ;)

I'd very much like to train mine to come out during lights on. I assume it all comes down to consistency?

yea you are really just training them to come out looking for food at a certain time

I should be a new sun coral owner here before long, right Bobby ;)

I'd very much like to train mine to come out during lights on. I assume it all comes down to consistency?

YUP Pearson, you are correct. sorry it is taking so long ... i have been swamped at work and at home (putting in a new AC unit stinks, ours bit the dust). i will have it out on Monday morning if it kills me !! thanx for being so patient with me !!

No worries, just bustin' your chops :p

Mine seems to stay out most of the time although at first it seemed to only come out around feeding time.

Due to work i never really know when i will be at home, so i have no food feeding routine (this may represent a more natural habitat) so.... I've found my sun coral to be open more often than not., I spot feed every third day which seems to be working well (continues to colonise)

We have a yellow encrusting colony (Tubastrea faulkneri) as well as a black branching colony (T. micrantha) and both are doing very well after nearly a year in our tank. I'd read that the black ones don't usually fair as well in captivity (Borneman) but we've seen new polyps/branches on the colony as well as countless polyps popping up on the live rock around the tank - so many that I'm considering using the "lack" of baby black sun coral polyps as a guide for where I need more flow in the tank. They've been a close 3rd behind the Xenia and Aiptasia for spawning speed for the last 2 months.

It can't be stressed enough how much food these creatures really need to grow and thrive (as opposed to simply "live"). I tend to feed all of our corals a LOT and our sun corals are no exception, being spot-fed daily in addition to both being in areas of multiple converging currents so they get a lot of uneaten fish food as well. Until we moved our large electric blue hermit crab to another tank we used to take both colonies out of the tank and spot-feed them in a small container because they were being attacked and torn open for the food before they could finish eating - they slimed up the first few times but after a week they'd close as soon as we picked them up and re-open as soon as they were still again in the small container (where they'd get up to 2 full cubes of Selcon-soaked mysis on "hungry" days). I spot feed them with a turkey baster now with the powerheads and returns off, usually the better part of a full cube of Selcon-soaked mysis (1/2 each) - they also get any leftover chunks of silversides (also soaked in Selcon) when we feed our saddle-carpet anemone (every 3-4 days).

Something I haven't seen mentioned, which probably affects the dendroid (branching) colonies more than the encrusting colonies, is I've heard/read that having detectable nitrates can lead to extremely brittle skeletons - something we've also heard mentioned for stony corals in general. Wish I had a link handy but I don't remember where I read that sun corals are affected more than other corals... it may, in fact, be more anecdotal than factual. Low nitrates tend to be everyone's goal but I figured I'd mention it.

PS. Sun corals were found intact and still attached to their skeletons near the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests in the 1950's ... very hardy animals to say the least!

interesting about the atomic bomb site !! thatnks for sharing that with us.

Chris,
It is interesting but feeding time at my house is anytime between 5 PM and 1 AM so maybe that is why mine are also open most of the time.

Lucas,
I have been feeding my 2 polyps of sun coral 3-4 Marine ZOE and garlic soaked mysis a day but I have not had any new polyps. Maybe I need to feed more. Will yours quit taking food when they are full?

Lucas,
I have been feeding my 2 polyps of sun coral 3-4 Marine ZOE and garlic soaked mysis a day but I have not had any new polyps. Maybe I need to feed more. Will yours quit taking food when they are full?

Yeah, they'll start slowing down and eventually start spitting the food out - not something you should induce often but I did it with both of our colonies initially to see how large of an appetite each one had. I'm sure our yellow colony has enough polyps on it now to gulp down 3 or 4 cubes of mysis in one sitting - but they're growing/spawning fast enough already.

Also, garlic doesn't do much for corals, more of a fish "appetite stimulus" thing and it could attract cleaner shrimps or crabs that will pester or injure the sun coral polyps to steal the food ( if you have shrimps/crabs). Soaking the food in ZOE, Selcon, or some other vitamin-soak is an excellent practice, though.


3-4 per day sounds like plenty for 2 polyps, have you taken a keen look around your tank for new buds lately? They're quite small when they first pop up.

Well, I've been looking for new polyps on the rock the others are on and haven't been searching the tank for them specifically. But, I do spend quite a bit of time looking for new stuff in my tank. I've recently found a couple of pocillopora recruits. :)
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f198/CarmieJo/DSC_3436.jpg
I just prepare the food for everything all together so that is why the mysis gets the garlic. I rarely have a problem with stealing, perhaps because there is food for everyone???

Carmie - Feeding times,, this could be the reason why our polyps are out regularly.



Just recreantly my fish have started to rip food away from the polyps, even though I feed my fish first.

I will need to reposition if I'm to use a feeding dome or remove the coral when feeding, I'm not over keen on this idea as my tank is only 60 gal and im worried about stressing my fish out on a regular basis.

I've also thought of placing the coral in my refuge for a while in order to fully establish a good colony :unsure:

that sounds like a good idea Chris. they dont need the lighting so that would work out great. no fish to steal the food from them AND a nice place to live !!

Could just toss it in the fuge for feeding and move it back. Ours got used to being moved into a big old Brita jug full of saltwater for an hour every day.

Personally, I couldn't bear to stash our big yellow colony in a fuge - we have an upstream refugium/RDSB on a shelf near the tank that's sort of a "display fuge" but the water probably isn't even deep enough to cover the coral - and I wouldn't be able to see if I put it anywhere else in the system (under the tank). I love having a giant yellow fireball sitting in the center of the display.

I need to take some pictures of our sun corals, the most recent photo I have of the T. faulkneri colony is nearly 6 months old and it looks so small (http://flickr.com/photos/drthompson/355318523/)!

very healthy looking !! i love the corals but between taking care of my system, work, a new house, a wife, and writing for reefreaders.com ... i have very little time anymore. so feeding regularly is NOT gonna happen right now, but maybe in the future i will take on the challenge again.

Doc, very nice brother
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/151/355318523_7c4e211b67.jpg?v=0

Ive got one of these, & a midnight purple on order, well its prob more black:huh: who's looking anyways.
i do hope its close to this quality.
whats been your spread rate & duration?

Ive got one of these, & a midnight purple on order, well its prob more black:huh: who's looking anyways.
i do hope its close to this quality.
whats been your spread rate & duration?

That yellow colony (T. faulkneri I think?) hasn't done much more than bug new polyps between the existing polyps within the colony (so imagine that same picture, same size base/rock, but double the # of polyps and make them all about twice as long!).

When I do my daily "hunt down and kill new aiptasia spawn" through the tank I've been finding new T. micrantha polyps as frequently as I find new aiptasia for the last couple of weeks - which is quite amazing if you've ever seen the rate that aiptasia can reproduce at. While this is generally good news it's also a bit of a pain because they tend to look very similar (they're both usually 5 or 6mm across and it's usually pre-dawn so my only illumination source is a couple of tiny keychain LED lights (1 red, 1 white).

my digital camera is back in working order so I'll try to remember to snap a few shots of both colonies one of these evenings ... I don't think any of the new black sun coral polyps are big enough for my crappy Canon powershot to see in detail, even in macro mode, but I'll hunt around and see.

doctorthompson - your posts have been really useful and interesting (big thanks) your sun coral is amazing and credit to you.

I would like to keep my sun coral in my display tank, but unfortunately he keeps getting attacked and because he's quite small I feel slightly protective and would like him to develop.

If I take him out every day to feed i'm concerned about constantly placing my hands in the tank. (doctorthompson I guess this did not effected your tank, is your tank large ??)

you should be fine just pulling the coral out of the water Chris. just be sure to wash your hands and arms (to the point were water will be touching them) before you put them in the tank. OR you could just go to this link ...

Fish : Gloves & Tongs (http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/NavResults.cfm?N=2004+113166)

and order some. they are only about $3 for the ones i have.

you should be fine just pulling the coral out of the water Chris.

I will give it a go, im slightly worried as I was positioning some corals for about 3 days and my fish got white spot, until than I rarely placed my hands in the tank and I never had any issues before for over six months.

I had 4 domino damsels from the start (bad advice) as they grew they started to pick on each other, so im not sure if this may of caused white spot.

White spot, which we call ich, is a parasite. Did you add anything new to the tank before the outbreak? Ich is often brought on by stress and I think the fish picking at each other would be far more stressful than having your hands in the tank.

It is a rare day when my hands are NOT in my tank. The biggest stress about that is having my maroon clown attack me. (Sometimes to the point of drawing blood!)

It is a rare day when my hands are NOT in my tank. The biggest stress about that is having my maroon clown attack me. (Sometimes to the point of drawing blood!)

i had an Allards clown that did the same thing ... RARE fish or not, he is outta here !! (let this be a lesson ... never bite the hand that feeds you)

I would like to keep my sun coral in my display tank, but unfortunately he keeps getting attacked and because he's quite small I feel slightly protective and would like him to develop.

If I take him out every day to feed i'm concerned about constantly placing my hands in the tank. (doctorthompson I guess this did not effected your tank, is your tank large ??)

Had no issues when we used to take them out (other than the clownfish bites of course!)

Our tank is 75g but we're currently pushing ~1800gph of flow in the main display which I think helps keep everyone distracted. I'll usually kick the closed loop and powerheads back on as soon as the sun corals have a good grasp on the food, everyone else chases the bits that float away and the sun corals chow down without any hassle.

Try a feeding dome perhaps? cut off the bottom of a 2L plastic bottle (some folks will glue PVC to the spout to add food thru).

Carmie - No the only new addition was the coral, since then i only have 1 damsel left.

Lucas – Using a feeding doom seems like a good plan, I feel more reassured about placing my hands in the tank, Bobby also mentioned purchasing long cloves which I now have on order.