I've been looking at this black coral at the LFS the last 10 times that I've been there. The LFS had it under MH so I put it in my main tank under the VHO lighting. Once I figured out what it "really" was I moved it to the newly cycled 30 gallon (yeah, it was lonely in the garage & I had extra LR & LS.) My daughter swiped the T5 lighting for her 55g. tank so the 30g has a 18" standard fixture with a 50/50 coralife bulb. The Sun Coral loves it! After a week under the big lights without seeing any polyps coming out, it finally starting showing some life within 24 hours in the low light. I knew it was dying when I bought it & figured on giving it a chance in my tank (it's my rescue instinct., dogs, cats, fish, now corals) The tank has low flow & am feeding Live Plankton (dt's), cyclops, rotofiers

http://jcreefbuddies.com/images/Coral/sep20_02.jpg

http://jcreefbuddies.com/images/Coral/sep20_01.jpg

Nice! I have an orange, but really want a black one to go with it.

i noticed that you kept mentioning the lighting for these corals ... but these corals are not photosynthetic. they do not need any certain amount of lighting to thrive, but they will need good water chemistry and daily to every other day feeding.

i noticed that you kept mentioning the lighting for these corals ... but these corals are not photosynthetic.

Mentioning the lighting was just releasing my frustration at an ignorant LFS "owner." This is a saltwater only, primarily coral, store too! My first clue should have been "they have polyps that come out, but I have never seen them." I guess I just expected someone who is in the business of selling "only" saltwater fish/corals to know what they have and how to care for them. In a more diverse pet shop, yeah I don't trust most of them, but a saltwater store is completely different. I am going to go back one more time and see if he has the other sun coral & save/buy it too :)

The black one is very cool and honestly I was like a 5 year old at Christmas when I saw the
polyps. They are all frilly :)

I feed mine mysis. Each polyp will take several. I start feeding the rest of the tank and then take a turkey baster and drop mysis in each polyp. Like Bobby said, feeding is the key to successfully maintaining these beautiful corals.

Yup, lotsa food is the main key but you might want to up the flow around it as well, these dendroid colonies can get stuff lodged in the branches... and the dead heads are also become a haven for accumulated detritus and cyanobacteria. Maybe a small powerhead hitting the glass near it, more for turbulence than actual flow.

Remember to keep the calcium levels stable (actual ppm value can be anywhere from 380 up to 450, as long as it doesn't vary much) and alkalinity tending towards the high end. All that food is of no use if this coral doesn't also get the necessary materials to build on that legendary T. micrantha skeleton that survived the 1950s atomic tests around the Bikini Atoll. Once these things start growing they can utilize phenomenal amounts of calcium (almost on par with some of the slower growing Acropora species).

really nice, i seen a nice colony of black ones that stayed at a lfs in my town but the $ was out of my league! i fell in love with it though. one day:)