caring for a sun coral

[Ajilon]

we brought a sun coral home on Saturday. So far I haven't been successful in getting him to open and feed. I've been trying to feed him late at night after the lights go off. Any suggestions? I figured he'd be hungry by now. I"m a little worried. I don't want to lose him. He's kinda cool.

[micromount]

There are posts on the first several pages regarding this.

[dendro982]

Just feed it at least twice a week. A month of once a week feedings was acceptable, but my became then less plump. Restored when the feedings were increased. With daily feedings of the smaller amounts you will have faster growth and popping on of larger amount of a new polyps.

Variety of foods and/or enriched foods are preferable. I had read good things about feeding chopped krill and Ocean Nutrition VHP Special Formula. But didn't tried the last one myself.

New coral may fuss over homemade sea food blend, may not. If it does, Mysis with small addition of the Marine Cuisine, and Brine shrimp should work.

If your sun has high polyps' skeletons, the large pieces of food blend may stick in between and decay there - blow them off by long analog of the turkey baster.

Efficient skimmer should take care about excess of nutrients in the tank, but watch it for the first days to make sure, that it skims well.

If you have hammers and frogspawns, it's better to have them downflow from sun coral.

Provide the rock surface for it to grow sideways, or in year you may face necessity to deal with polyps, growing at the bottom, as I did :D .

You know about feeding devices already, right?
Just in case, Lunar Lander (http://reefrancher.com/index.php?tag=diy), search for "precise delivery sun coral feeding device" should show you the syringe based version, my tools (http://www.defineyourreef.frihost.net/corals/suntools.html). YTube has feeding videos, Melev's - somewhere on the LPS forum here, and mine - at my pages.

Good luck!

[Ajilon]

This is lots of good information! Thanks!

it's been 4 days now and so far it hasn't opened. I pulled it out last nght and sat it in a bowl on the counter, chumming the water with cyclopeeze. It was close to opening, but never fully. Perhaps tonight I'll have better luck.

The specimen I have has over 40 polyps on it and is a very brilliant orange. Having to feed that many polyps individually will be a chore, but no doubt, worth it. I'm considering taking it out of my DT and placing it in my nano. There aren't many corals in there , so it'll have less competition for food. I noticed every time I try to feed it in my DT, the serpent star comes right out and after it in search of something to eat. I always have to chase him back under a rock. It takes about 3-4 times but he eventually gets the message.

[dendro982]

Lately I bought few starved sun corals, most of them opened to feed right in the tank (also 90g), including bright orange. But it didn't opened fully too - it takes time to recover. If it started to eat - it's good enough.

I'm giving them usually a larger food, then Cyclop Eeze, like mysis. Cyclop-eeze works well to induce polyps opening.

If you have food competition, maybe it makes sense to use covering by bottle, unless the coral is higher on the rock.
I took opposite route: when suns are eating, everybody has a feast. But I'm not advocating this way, it's just easier for me :) .

[EllieSuz]

I feed the fish their evening meal and check back in twenty minutes to find the Sun Coral open and hungry. If you feed at approximately the same time each day, you will eventually "train" them to open. On another thread I saw someone who emerses a Sun in a container of tank water and then "overfeeds". I'm going to try this a couple of times a month to be sure to get each polyp fed now and then.

[RickM61]

I had one that didnt want to open..i was told to melt some mysis in a container then with a turkey baster shoot some of the juice down to the sun coral..i tried this and it worked for me..now mine are trained to open up at a certian time of the day..hope this helps

Rick

[emissary43]

A few hints on making overfeeding in specimen box work for you.

1- first dust(use a baster to spray just the liquid of your feeding solution around the coral. Wait a few minutes and possibly repeat for the coral to open.

2- Gently lift the coral into the submerged specimen box. NEVER REMOVE THE SUN CORAL FROM THE WATER. To do so won't hurt the coral really it will just make it close immediately and you will be hard pressed to get it to reopen.

3- then gently bast the food over the polyps. and once the food has been brought into the stomach it will open for more repeat once or twice more.

4- Then without removeing from the water return the coral to your tank. To remove it from the water at this stage will likely force it to regurge your hard work.

Personally I far prefer to hand baster feed the coral in the tank undisturbed. I find it easier and less disruptive and damaging to the coral.

Good Luck

[EllieSuz]

How important is it to reach every polyp? My Sun is feeding very well, but a few of the polyps are underneath it and it's difficult to feed those individually. I think my Candy Cane is a lot harder to feed and quicker to close if I don't feed gently enough. With the Candy Cane, I usually have to feed after lights out.

[emissary43]

The jury is still out on that one as far as I understand, but the general consensus from what I have read in the forums and in my experience is that those connected by flesh share SOME nutrients and those separated from die off do not. If anyone knows of any solid research on this topic it would be awesome if they posted it. Best to feed as many heads as you can. I do so without disturbing the colony as a whole basically encouraging growth were I can see and reach.

[Ajilon]

I moved mine from my DT to my nano this morning and kept the lights off. OH WOW! I had no idea these were so beautiful! I've never once since I brought this coral home, have seen it opened up. It's not even opened fully, but it's so close. I've been chumming the water every 15 minutes with cyclopeeze and it's wasting no time. I'm relieved. It's been over 2 weeks and all efforts to get it to eat have failed. There is a temperature difference between my DT and my nano. The nano is much warmer. Maybe that's it?

[dendro982]

Two weeks? I feel your pain - I was in panic on the 5th day, when my new black sun didn't open to eat.
Glad to hear good news.

If you have frozen mysis or raw seafood, consider using this in addition to the cyclop-eeze.

You tried to feed it at night too in DT, right? But it opened only in nano. What are the temperatures in both?

What color is your sun coral, intense orange or pale? Just curious, what was going on.
My pale pinkish-orange, intense orange, lemon yellow, branching lemon yellow and low growing black are opening from 76.2F to 82.6F (didn't try beyond this range).

About feeding each polyps: few threads on the sun coral back, I posted photos of my sun coral, that had grown tissue under the rock. These polyps were never fed due to impossibility to reach. They didn't die, and colony continued to expand.

[Ajilon]

I only have one to start with. Depending on how I do with this one, I'll eventually get another. It's a shame they're the most beautiful when you're sleeping!

Mine is an intense orange with some black mixed in. The temps in my DT lingers at 77, while the nano hangs more around 80. In the DT it was in the sand. In the nano it's on a small rock. Maybe that has alot to do with it too? Like yours, mine has small polyps on the bottom that I can't get to without disturbing it.

I shut down the powerhead and then chummed the water with cyclopeeze to get it to open up. It took about an hour, but once it did, it wolfed down 3 cubes of mysis. It was the first time since I'd bought it home that it actually ate. At least it's doing well in the nano. Unfortunately, that's my QT tank, so eventually we'll move it back to the DT and try cover feeding.

How often do you feed yours? I've heard anything from everyday to once a week.

[emissary43]

It's a shame they're the most beautiful when you're sleeping!

To solve this an several other common problems I have reversed my lighting schedule. By having several sun corals and cave corals you make you tank look beautiful light or dark. It makes feeding night feeders far easier. Plus you can set your tank hours so that by 9pm-- when I am usually in my den-- the rest of the corals are open in full daytime glory. Since the LEDs come on from 4pm to 4am it is somewhat lit for most guests and you don't have to stress your corals by disrupting the light cycle when you have people over in the evening. Also, by doing so you move the energy usage off peak hours. If you live in a warm region you reduce how hard your chiller has to work and how much you heat your house up during the day further reducing your impact on the power grid.

Buying sustainable coral and fish is not the only way to be an environmentally conscious home reef keeper. :)

Originally I was concerned I would have to build a tank mit of sorts to block daytime light but everything has been flourishing on the schedule for 1.5 years now. Even my shrimp and snails kept breeding like crazy.

Soon I will figure out how to Shrink my images without making them look blocky to show you guys some pics. I just picked up an awesome digital camera and I took some great macro shots.

[dendro982]

Ajilon: do you have a photo of your sun coral? I had never seen yet the orange with the black. Mine is plain.

About frequency of feeding:
I'm feeding mine twice a week usually, but during the summer hot weather, 1 -1.5 months, only once a week because of water quality. Coral becomes skinnier, but after resuming feeding it recovers. I have it only for 2 yrs (pale pink-orange), but it grows by budding - had to frag it, and spawns frequently.

I had read about daily feedings by krill and very fast budding somewhere at Coral propagation forum, could be Oct 07, and observed the same, then I started to feed the new starved corals with tissue recession every day or every other day.

Take a look:
This is one of the babies, roughly 1 yr old, fed by dried Cyclop eeze. It was just glued then to the marble tile and moved to the main tank, where all suns are:
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g78/dendro982/LPS/Tubastrea%20babies/gluingSep26_07orange.jpg
Here it is now, after bein fed for a few months bu frozen cubes of mysis, Ocean Plankton, and seafood. Amount of new polyps increased to unusual:
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g78/dendro982/LPS/Tubastrea%20babies/May19_08dailyfeed.jpg

Normally, the single new buds are here and there, at the distance.

The parental coral, soon after being imported (from new shipment then), has even less new buds:
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g78/dendro982/LPS/Sun%20fragging/Jul13_06.jpg

What else I noticed:
coral could be fed repeatedly to regurgitation, or fed in smaller doses (1-2 pieces of food per mouth, roughly) more frequently. No regurgitation then, no food wasted and less tank pollution.

Yes, mine are also most beautiful after the lights are off, but they open for a feeding during the daytime, less than at night, but you will see how the big will polyps and tentacles grow after a few months. Ah, my tank has low lights, 110W PC for 48" long, 24" deep 90g tank.

Are we doing this for good or bad - early to say, but this is very unusual to me.


emissary43:
Thank you for the tip on changing lighting hours. I didn't thought about it before. Now the hourly energy usage metering is being implemented in our area too, it will help with the cost of electricity and overheating in the summer.

About shrinking images: I, personally, am using freeware IrfanView. Small, efficient, trouble free.
How to make images smaller:
Open the file. Using the magnifying glass with minus on it (icon above photo), choose, what size you would prefer. See % at the bottom. Go now to the top menu: Image: Resize/Resample and set this percentage in the window for %. Press OK. Now go again to Image: Effects: Effect browser: Unsharp. Then save reduced image. Done.

What camera do you have?

[emissary43]

Thats great I wasn't using unsharpen and that was the ticket to success thanks for the tip!

By the way I really like the idea of using marble tiling as a frag base. I bet it would work really well as a flat surface for growing out Acans and fraging them off.

Here is a shot of my Australian Cave coral during the day (looks just like a Sun Coral but has HUGE polyps) and next to it is a light yellow sun coral I picked up lacking any connective flesh. Had it for a little while now and the flesh is beginning to extend over the surface again.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/518/147757Cave_Coral_Daytime.jpg


This is a pre-feeding night shot. It will open even more after the feeding but sometimes it responds to the flash and shuts rapidly similar to a fether duster, I am afraid of a violent regurge so until I work out how to solve this problem only pre-feeding shots. Just look at the size difference. They are at the same distance from the camera in this shot.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/518/147757Cave_Night_Prefeeding.jpg

And i know it is not a nonphotosynthetic coral but this one is for you dendro982! Post feeding Japanese Dendro with new baby head zoomed in in the upper left hand corner. One of my favorite pictures to date.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/518/147757Dendro-_and_new_head.jpg

All of these shots were taken with my new 10.2 megapixel Sony A300 :D

[dendro982]

Congratulations on the dendrophyllia's baby!

OOT: my dendro username was a honest mistake: my soft spot is red and pink scleronephthyas, that was told to me in common name, what I misID as dendronephthya :(

Please, tell later how the progress with receded tissue will be. I thought, that this is a different kind of sun corals: each polyp for itself, with no common tissue between them.
Different kind of suns with receded tissue, that I have, have irregular pattern of tissue loss - like paint, flowing down:
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g78/dendro982/LPS/sunD2.jpg
This one is recovering well.

I'm also interested in sun corals (and their relatives) identification, for yellow and orange kinds. If you'll find any links with references to the original sources, post them for us.

[emissary43]

Is that a goblin fish?

[dendro982]

Nope, just plain scooter blenny, dragonets family.

[emissary43]

Of course I should have seen that. Low profile and bands. As for the flesh die back, in my experience these guys have really sensitive flesh and that is a regular damage pattern through shipping and "handling" but it will grow back as long as macro algae doesn't out compete. As for the connective tissue. Basicly from all the wild shots I have seen they should have complete flesh coverage and connection but it is really hard to regain that after it is lost. Much easier to retain it on new growth.

[Ajilon]

Mine doesn't open as well as all of yours. It's tentacles are quite short. I'm assuming they'll grow as I keep feeding him. I'll get a picture later today when the water clears a bit. I just did a water change on that tank so pictures aren't going to be the greatest. It's primarily orange with 7 black heads all mingled through it.

[dendro982]

Very interesting, something new comes each time for seemingly single and simple species Tubastrea :)

Ajilon: still post pictures, later is OK. I had never seen this kind, curious.

As for short tentacles, give it a couple of months: this is not species-specific, but depends on the feeding of the coral.

If I didn't yet overflood you with pictures and you can bear more, here is the same coral in the first days:
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g78/dendro982/SunApr29_06.jpg
and half of year later:
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g78/dendro982/Dec06a.jpg

and and again:
first days:
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g78/dendro982/LPS/Nov17_07ysunop.jpg
and few months later:
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g78/dendro982/LPS/Feb2208yellowsunreg.jpg

Another orange sun was acquired recently, not much changes so far.
I'm trying to check their possibilities and limits of tolerance :D

[mollymonticello]

I've got an orange and black one, also. Check my avatar. I've had it about a year now? The black polyps have come back from near death. I have little baby orange and black ones pop up all over the tank all the time. It's pretty neat.

I feed mine every single day. Sometimes I go away for the weekend, but other than that, they are fed every day. I feed a mixture of cyclops, small mysis (big ones are hard to digest for sun corals), rotifers, and roe eggs. They like the cyclops and mysis best. Mine is "trained" to come out at the same time every night. But at first, I had to "dust" it with a little food once every few minutes until it opened. Each polyp is its own animal, so I feed every single one, every single day. I love my sun corals :)

Here's a pic of one of the baby ones

<img src="http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/5632/img3158ia8.jpg">

I also run my lights at night instead of during the day. I have always done that to help with heat, because I keep Syngnathids. My lights turn on at 5 pm and turn off at 1 am. That way there is still a period of complete darkness.

[dendro982]

I understand, that Ajilon's sun coral has bright orange and black colors on the same coral...

The black sun baby: is it T. diaphana or T. micrantha? It's a beauty.

I recently bought T. diaphana to see how it will be doing. It was much slower in starting to open for a feeding, then all my yellow and orange suns. But after starting, there were no problems at all.
How yours behaved, comparing one to another?

How much time it took for the black sun coral to recover and appearance of the babies?

Ajilon, I hope that you will not consider this as hitchhiking your thread :p . But if you do - please tell.

[mollymonticello]

I wish I would have documented when everything happened, but I didn't. Maybe about 6 months after I got it, I started to see babies. I actually saw the black babies first. My black polyps are a little healthier and open better, faster, and more often than the orange. But I think that is because I spoil them. I'm more careful with the black polyps, for sure, and feed them more food. I can see a definite difference. As of today, though, there are more orange babies spread about the tank than black ones. Or maybe I just can't see the black ones. I'm not sure which species my sun corals are. What are the differences between T. micrantha and T. diaphana? I've always believed it to be T. micrantha because the place I got it from carries that species.

These are older pictures, excuse the algae. I will scrape algae off the glass and try for a better one soon.

<img src="http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/332/suncoralscb5.jpg">

<img src="http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/1669/img3184ci1.jpg">

I bet Ajilon has two seperate species that have randombly colonized the same rock, or the orange ones are overgrowing the black ones.

[Ajilon]

yeah it's more or less 2 separate species on the same rock but they're intermingled. Theres black polyps scattered throughout. I promise I'll get a picture some time later this afternoon. We spent ALL day yesterday moving a 125g into the house and setting up. In fact, we're still setting up. I need to get the plumbing to my liking and the calcium reactor online, though I may wait a day or 2 before I do that so the system can clear out some.

[dendro982]

I misunderstood, sorry :)
I already seen that combo (orange and T. diaphana).

Tubastrea micrantha (http://images.google.ca/images?gbv=2&hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=Tubastrea+micrantha&spell=1) has longer branches, is browner and has greenish tentacles, rare and more sensitive, than Tubastrea diaphana (http://images.google.ca/images?gbv=2&hl=en&q=Tubastrea+diaphana&btnG=Search+Images), that has low compact branching growth, almost black, with lighter brownish tentacles.

Thanks, I hope that my black one will recover well and also will start to spawn.

[mollymonticello]

Dendro, thanks for the info. I'm pretty sure mine is T. micrantha, then. That is what the store said it was, also. The body almost looks red in bright light while the tentacles are always greenish. I'm glad it's doing so well. I counted its polyps last night and it has just about 50% more polyps than last year. I'm not sure if that is good growth or not. But I am happy that most of the tissue that receded before I bought it has been recovered. Well, it's actually time to feed it right now :)

Good luck with your new tank, Ajilon.

[dendro982]

mollymonticello:
If I may to ask - for the benefit of the people, who asked me about the same, but for pale orange sun coral - when you can, post please:

1. Where larvae settled (LR only or on other surfaces too and what other kinds of surfaces were available for the planula at the same time, but wasn't preferred). For knowing better larvae settlement clues.

2. What caused spawning, in your opinion: daily feedings, particular food, or turning flow off, as Ameya (http://www.wetwebmedia.com/corlpropfaq2.htm) noticed.

3. What allowed larvae to settle in your tank, not just disappear. I had read assumption, that it's the skimmer removes the floating planula.

May be a separate thread about larvae settlement preferences for a Tubastrea corals will be more easily findable, it's up to you. I could add data for my sun, others may join too. Just an idea.

And for me:
My black sun coral (T. diaphana), starved to the tissue recession, was very slow to open, 5 days or so, comparing to all other suns. Has fastest regeneration so far after mechanical tissue damage.

Did you notice something particular like this about T. micrantha, or about interaction of the two different suns in so close proximity?

I prefer to be prepared just in case, if I will be able to acquire it.

Ajilon, if you don't mind, same comparative information about your corals, OK? Starving for knowledge: hundreds of people are keeping these corals and usually only feeding comes into discussion.

[mollymonticello]

1. Where larvae settled (LR only or on other surfaces too and what other kinds of surfaces were available for the planula at the same time, but wasn't preferred). For knowing better larvae settlement clues.

That is a really good question. The planulae settled in a lot of places in the tank, but only the ones on my Tonga branching rock in relative darkness survived. There were a few on my aquacultured live rock about half way down the tank, receiving some light. They did not survive.

2. What caused spawning, in your opinion: daily feedings, particular food, or turning flow off, as Ameya noticed.

I strongly believe that heavy feedings make my sun corals spawn. I have pretty good flow in my tank, a Korlia 1 and a Koralia 2, a refugium, and a Filstar XP3. Over all, I have more than 25 times turnover.

3. What allowed larvae to settle in your tank, not just disappear. I had read assumption, that it's the skimmer removes the floating planula.

I haven't thought much about that. It just kind of happened. I am still seeing new babies appear with some frequency. I should get a skimmer and see if that stops them from appearing.

You should check out project DIBS, they have a thread dedicated to spawning sun corals. I don't think anyone's solved the mystery yet, but it's an interesting topic.

[dendro982]

Thank you, very interesting for comparison and should be helpful for future tubastrea breeders.

What thread you are referring to? I just checked, they moved to a new server and maybe it was lost. I found one thread with Umm, fish's sun babies (T. coccinea) and everything else is a references.

The good part is that we have information from breeders (intentional or not, not important ;) ) about reproduction of Tubastrea micrantha (yours and evilervin), T. diaphana (Daniela Stettler and some others), T. coccinea (Umm, fish and others) and T. faulkneri (I believe that mine is it, others had it reproducing too).
Only I don't recall seeing the lemon-yellow sun coral reproduction threads...

[Bfritzsch]

Awesome Pictures of the sun corals...