Sun Coral Trouble

[gobiesguy05]

Well i must say that there is no real trouble now, as my sun coral has passed on to another place. I dont understand it. I did everything that i was supposed to do. Proper lighting and flow, calc supplements, hand feeding the correct foods. I DEDICATED at least 45 minutes to this coral everyday. Yet, to my dismay, it still died. I am not the only one that has had troulble keeping them apparently. After scanning the threads, i see where others had some sort of problem with them either not lasting that long or messing up their water parameters. I dont know.l Can someone please help me figure out what i did wrong? I love the way the sun corals look and wish to keep another one but i am not going to if i cant keep it alive. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!

[buzzer]

How long has your tank been set-up.
I have heard they require a mature tank set-up(1 year old)

[simonf]

gobiesguy05,

Describe its condition leading up to its death. Did it slowly recede? Was there algae growth on the skeleton? What did it look like when you got it? Did it ever grow flesh in your tank?

Feeding questions:
I'm assuming you saw it open up and eat right?
How did you feed it?
How much did you feed it?

From what I've read most people that have problems either never get them to open up or don't feed them enough. They seem to be pretty hardy animals. The key seems to be getting a health one and getting it eating.

[gobiesguy05]

my sun slowly parished over about a month to two months. There was no algae growth on the skeleton. Its seemed healthy to me when i got it, although it wasnt pale it wasnt extremely bright when i bought it. I noticed a mark on it, near the base, but it kinda wrinkled up and expanded in relation to it opening up when it ate. When you say flesh, what do you mean? i dont ever remember seeing something float off of it or anything like that. As far as food 1 1/2 cube misys shrimp with 1/2 cube brine shrimp mixed together twice a day by way of a small turkey baster.

[gobiesguy05]

my tank has been running for almost 2 years now, i took the tank maturity thing into consideration. Also i watched open to eat. I would always watch it eat at least once per day and then only part of the time i was watching for the second feeding of the day. I had the sun for about a total of three and a half months. and i thought that it was doing fine until it started to wither away in front of my eyes. Do you think it could be OVER feeding?

[swims withthe fishes]

I know that these corals can be pretty sensative to nitrates...

[gobiesguy05]

im good on that. i havent had a water perameter change in about 7 months in this tank.

[simonf]

Sorry I should have been more clear. Alot of times when people get sun corals the flesh has already started to recede from stress/lack of feeding and so they have exposed skeleton and I was wondering if yours had started to grow back over this. Something I would take as a sign of improving/good heath.

Your experience sounds odd. You were feeding it everyday and it was eating, never heard of someone overfeeding sun polyps, and yet it withered away. I would say most issues with overfeeding are due to it foulding your water.

Do you have any live stock that could have caused the polyps problems? Shrimp/fish damaging polyps while stealing food.

Did you upgrade your lighting change anything else? What kind of flow was it under? Was it down stream from something with long streamers, gallaxia/Euphyllia/etc?


Simon

[gobiesguy05]

I do have a few shrimp and a porclean crab. I have witnessed on several occasion where the porcelan was on the sun polyps, almost as if it was trying to host it. I have all cleaning shrimp to include a few peppermint shrimp. Could it have been the peppies or the crab? No change in lighting, what i would say to be medium flow. It was downstream of my frogspawn, but they werent close enough to touch. they were about a foot apart and one was slightly higher than the other.