[lgtentacle]

There's a trick that you can do to get the corals to open and stay that way for longer periods during the day. When you first get the corals, they are only used to night feeding. Put a small amount of food in the tank for your fish during your dusk light dimming mode. The frozen carnivore version of the ocean nutrition foods worked well for me. The corals will smell the food and open up (as already noted in the tupperware method). If you are thawing the frozen cubes in water, then using a turkey baster or similar feeding device, you can spray the leftover thawing water near the corals since it also has the smell from the frozen food. After a little while (10-30 minutes), target feed the coral. Slowly over time (months) feed the fish a bit earlier each day (a few minutes) with small amounts of food and vary the target feeding time on the coral (feed some heads a little while after feeding the fish and others awhile later, but don't be consistent on which ones get feed early. Mix it up.). After several months of doing this, I was able to get the corals to open about five hours earlier than my normal dusk lighting period and the corals would stay open the whole evening (I usually didn't get home from work until 6:00 and the lights are on until 11:30). Once the corals get used to being feed early they seemed to consistently open early and stay open even without target feeding them directly after feeding the fish. If you have fish that require more frequent feedings (like anthias), then this process is much easier since you would normally feed frequent, small amounts to the tank anyway. Anyway, this always worked well for me.