ive noticed the sun corals dont come out unless i feed them, other than that they are never showing off. is that normal? i sometimes see it puff up but never show off unless it senses some food in the water or when i spot feed it. any ideas? its located close to the bottem of my tank with indirect light close to a cave like they are suppose to.

Are yours on a regular feeding schedule? Mine open from time to time during the day, but they open every day at 8:00pm (feeding time) regardless of if I'm actualy feeding them or not, and stay open at least until I go to bed.

I am really bad about keeping on a schedule; feeding time is anywhere from noon to midnight depending on my schedule that day. I don't know if that is why but my sun coral seems open most of the time.

that is exactly why Carmie ...

tlpmyd, sun corals are NON photosynthetic, so the non direct light has absolutely nothing to do with the coral not opening up. these corals HAVE to be fed at least every other day and when doing this at the same time or withing an hour or so of the night before you will be "training" the coral on when it is time to open up for feedings. if you want them opened up a lot i would feed them (every polyp needs to be fed) like so ...
week 1 ... 5 pm
week 2 ... 6 pm
week 3 ... 7 pm
week 4 ... 8pm
then switch it back to 5 pm on the 5th week. this should get the coral to open up and stay opened until it gets fed. HTH

Or just get a busy life and feed whenever you are around. :)

Wow Bobby thats a great technique! I used to feed mine as often as possible. Eventually they started to just stay out. I have since traded mine in for Dendrophyllia because their polyps are larger and open all the time, but they are much more expensive than Tubestrea!

[QUOTE][tlpmyd, sun corals are NON photosynthetic, so the non direct light has absolutely nothing to do with the coral not opening up. these corals HAVE to be fed at least every other day and when doing this at the same time or withing an hour or so of the night before you will be "training" the coral on when it is time to open up for feedings. if you want them opened up a lot i would feed them (every polyp needs to be fed) like so ...
week 1 ... 5 pm
week 2 ... 6 pm
week 3 ... 7 pm
week 4 ... 8pm
then switch it back to 5 pm on the 5th week. this should get the coral to open up and stay opened until it gets fed. HTH/QUOTE]
wow, obedience classes for corals! :p:thats the first i heard of that! :rotfl:

wow, obedience classes for corals! :p:thats the first i heard of that! :rotfl:

ha ha ... i guess you could call it that. never thought of it that way, i always called it "training".

any ideas? its located close to the bottem of my tank with indirect light close to a cave like they are suppose to.

How old is your tank? How much live rock/live sand? I only ask because these corals are heavy zooplankton feeders. Mine are almost always open since adding an upstream refugium and inadvertently turning my sump into a collection of "pod farms" with baskets of rubble.

In the wild they are often found in tunnels and caves because of the amount of zooplankton they can catch there. In an aquarium environment being near a cave is probably not as valuable. Sun corals should be placed wherever they can catch the most food during the 23.75 hours each day that the aquarist isn't feeding them. Direct/Bright light doesn't hurt them if you were limiting your choices for placement based on lighting, just make sure there's enough water flow around the specimen. Settled detritus can be a haven for algal encroachment and cyanobacteria.

In addition to food, try to keep your salinity, pH, calcium, and alkalinity levels stable, from a day-to-day perspective as well as week-to-week. These are stony corals, VERY stony, and will do much better if those levels don't swing wildly (ie. daily corrections are much better than large weekly fixes).

I have since traded mine in for Dendrophyllia because their polyps are larger and open all the time, but they are much more expensive than Tubestrea!

... and far less hardy in the long term, especially when subjected to "less-than-pristine" water quality. Nitrate, phosphate, soft coral alellopathy, and toxic macroalgae metabolites have been the frequently accused culprits in reports of tissue recession and polyp bailout in Dendros.

They are gorgeous though, I hope yours does well! I'm thinking of trying one after I finish moving at the end of this month.

Doc, your on the ball brother. As he mentioned, make your trace & parameters your own.Like weekend BBQ's, just got to be a priority!
They are the apittamy of Complex-Simple creatures, stony yet non typical reef building, anem gross feeders but only from the non photo point of view. Prefer quality, however in light of less than perfect conditions reproduce for survival. A true paradox of nature. One that is often over looked if you ask me. regardless of species & personal opinions aside, all corals deserve respect.

I wish you luck & hope you get your animals to behave for you TLP.

... and far less hardy in the long term, especially when subjected to "less-than-pristine" water quality. Nitrate, phosphate, soft coral alellopathy, and toxic macroalgae metabolites have been the frequently accused culprits in reports of tissue recession and polyp bailout in Dendros.

They are gorgeous though, I hope yours does well! I'm thinking of trying one after I finish moving at the end of this month.


Thanks Doc! I waited 3 months before finally getting a head from my LFS. He had 3 left and a lady came in and bought 2 so I decided to get the last one because nobody in the area has them and won't have them unless they get them from somewhere else and I have yet to see them for sale at any other LFS or online vendors. The owner of the store took them out of his personal tank. I personally think they need to be put into established tanks with plenty of filtration. I strongly recommend this, unless you are so rich you can burn 100 dollar bills! :p

thanks for all the quick replys i have been feeding it more and noticed that it is showing off just a little bit more than normal, i had it in a high flow high light area and recently moved it to a low light good flow area, still really no change, but im sure its because of the feeding i will try and spoil it some more, right now im only spot feeding it phytoplanton.

try giving it a more varied diet ... phyto, mysis, brine, squid, cyclopeeze, oyster eggs, ect.

thanks for all the quick replys i have been feeding it more and noticed that it is showing off just a little bit more than normal, i had it in a high flow high light area and recently moved it to a low light good flow area, still really no change, but im sure its because of the feeding i will try and spoil it some more, right now im only spot feeding it phytoplanton.

Try a "meaty" food as others suggested, such as frozen mysis or diced frozen krill. Try to keep the chunks small or the undigested portions could be expelled later into your water column to decay.

I'd like to also add that Phytoplankton isn't an appropriate food for this coral (or most corals!) - at least not directly. Phytoplankton acts as food for smaller zooplankton species, and this can be observed quite quickly with soft corals which "appear" to react with a feeding response to phytoplankton additions, however when you cut'em up and put them under the microscope for gut content analysis later you'll find they didn't consume much phyto at all, but rather all the rotifers and other tiny creatures that swarmed up out of the sandbed and rocks to eat the phyto.

Good addition for most tanks, just not a good direct coral food.

PS. If you have a DSB, phyto can do wonders for the amount of life in your bed.

ok so i shouldnt be spot feeding the phytoplanton to my corals? what i usally do is mix that up with some diced krill/shrimp/daphnia and spot feed all my corals, now when i say spot feed i mean with the kent sea squirt, i just point over the top of the corals and squirt some, im not even sure if the corals take any in but i figured it was better than just tossing the mixture in the water.

you need to feed EVERY polyp on the colony for the best results. you will see them retract when they grab something. mine use to hold on to the stuff in the baster and pull out their own.

ok so i shouldnt be spot feeding the phytoplanton to my corals? what i usally do is mix that up with some diced krill/shrimp/daphnia and spot feed all my corals, now when i say spot feed i mean with the kent sea squirt, i just point over the top of the corals and squirt some, im not even sure if the corals take any in but i figured it was better than just tossing the mixture in the water.

The creatures that actually consume the phytoplankton are mostly microscopic so, no, not really worth trying to spot feed it to anything -- however, phytoplankton is the beginning of the food chain for many organisms in your tank and, in my opinion, is generally a good way to "feed" the infauna living in the sandbed and live rock, which in turn are consumed by your fish, corals, and other livestock. I just add the phytoplankton to the water in a high flow area and let it distribute around the tank. If you're using live phyto add it an hour or so after your main lights come on. Most of it will get consumed pretty quickly... in my 75 I can keep pouring phyto into the tank until the water is green and it will be clear within a couple of hours! Skimmers and activated carbon will pull out phytoplankton and thus cause some of it to go to waste, I turn off my skimmer for about an hour after I add phytoplankton.

Daphnia aren't really appropriate unless you're keeping fish or invertebrates known to inhabit brackish water. Probably best to stick to marine species.

For my 3 sun coral colonies I spot fed them with mysis soaked in Selco or Selcon for the first 2 or 3 months until they got "established" and started encrusting the live rock around them. I don't know if this actually helped or hindered them but all three (including a T. micrantha specimen) are doing quite well and growing steadily.

I only bothered with feeding each and every polyp individually for the first 2 or 3 days and have seen no ill effects BUT that could be due to the particular species I've got (T. micrantha and I think a T. faulkneri and T. aurea). I've heard that the polyps in some species can share nutrients and others can't but I've never seen any proof either way. Probably isn't a bad idea to feed every polyp but it can get quite tedious, quite quickly.