Black Sun Coral

[kookerson]

Im having success with my yellow sun coral and was thinking about going for the black ones........is there any difference in needs and behavior?

[John Zillmer]

The general understanding seems to be that the black suns tend not to live even with the best of care. But see this thread for some apparent success:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1277736

[Qckwzrd]

Seems the blacksuncoral needs to be fed a lot more then all the others in the hobby.

[ReneX]

As far as I can tell, there are two types of black sun coral out there that are being seen right now. T. diaphana, which seems to form small clumps of more upright polyps, and T. micrantha, which forms long thick tree-like branches.

It can be hard to tell which is which on small specimens, but micrantha has a poor survival history in captivity. They apparently need HUGE amounts of flow, above and beyond what regular sun corals need.

Diaphana seems much more forgiving, and IME seems pretty much identical in care to the orange/yellow species, but I have also only been keeping ANY sun coral since October. I haven't seen much specific literature on diaphana though; books either address orange/yellow sun corals (not hard to do if you feed them enough), or warns keepers to avoid micrantha because it seems to need something extra and no one is yet sure what.

[Qckwzrd]

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p60/qckwzrd/P1000619.jpg

[John Zillmer]

Nice, Qwkwzrd! How long has that specimen been in captivity?

[DetectiveTofu]

I've heard that they're much more finicky than your regular Tubastrea sp.

[revautosports]

Are there such things as black dendros???

[mollymonticello]

I've had mine for a while now, it's a rock with yellow and black sun polyps on it. Not sure exactly what species mine are. Mine not only grow new polyps on the colony, but they broadcast spawn all the time. I target feed cyclops and/or mysis every day, and I have about 23 x turnover. The sun corals are really close to a Koralia 1.

some pics of the "babies."

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/5632/img3158ia8.jpg

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/881/img3159xk8.jpg

http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/9903/img3160lm7.jpg

http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/751/img3162oz4.jpg

Sorry for the huge pics, I accidentally delete my microsoft paint, and now I have no idea how to resize pics.

[desara3]

Black much harder to care for and slower growth