FS/FT. SUNCORAL AND FUNGIA (EDM)
 

I thought I would try suncoral but every time I would feed it my shrimps would steal food. Thought well ill feed the shrimp well then feed the nps. Haha. Nope shrimp are greedy never getting enough. I don't want to foul my tank trying to feed and feed and well you get it.
27 heads on it
http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...11A91225F9.jpg
And this fungia. Same color as one beside it. Nice green
http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...11A0F46A6F.jpg
$50 for the two or trade for nice acropora.

Also throw in frag of this. You can see it in back. Accidental frags
http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...17195E0BA9.jpg

Sorry for the slight off topic on your sale. I have Sun Corals, too. To feed, I use a plastic water bottle with the bottom cut off, and place it over, with the cut out on the bottom. Then I feed (frozen mysis) with a turkey baster through the narrow neck. That contains the food, and the shrimp and fish can't steal the food. When the coral is finished feeding, I just remove the plastic bottle, and anything left over gets cleaned up then.

I really like my Sun Coral, adds lots of bright colour. I feed them in the morning (about every 3rd day), and they then get trained to keep their polyps/tentacles out for much of the day.

Good luck on the sale trade of your Sun Corals.

Good idea ill def try that

Here's a pic of mine, about 50 heads in this colony. Really adds colour to a tank.
http://i1304.photobucket.com/albums/...ps13cfa8fe.jpg

I'm going to try your method. I do like the piece just don't want to over feed the tank

Do they need to be fed daily or what's the feeding schedule

No, I feed mine 2 or 3 times a week. They will eat every day if you give it to them, but not necessary. I am going to try longer periods of time and watch what happens. Am planning a trip to warmer climes soon (about 10 days), and don't plan on feeding them when I'm gone. Hopefully they will be OK.

take it out of the tank for feeding when first training, to train my suncorals or dendros i simply take them out place them in a container and leave them in the container for a long time , hours actually. i feed a mix of mysis,coral snow and FM......set and forget and come back to fed corals , place them in the display and they are either swollen or open shortly afterwards, the sudden jump in flow triggers another feeding response.

after a week or two with the tupperware method and they will be fully acclimatized and only need to be fed here and there depending on the type it is.

i feed either FM lps pellets or mysis from a turkeybaster when i target feed them in the display.


consistency is key if you want them to stay healthy, once you have them down i swear youll want more lol :P

Sweet thanks guys ill hold on to it for now and see how this works

i have seen him do it. he well leave it there for hours! the sun corals look awesome! on a side note. he also leaves the tupperware on top of a sump to keep the water warm instead of freezing on the floor.

Accidental frags
 

how much you want for them :biggrin:
pm me

how about when it doesnt eat?

Well,just remove the "highly technical device"(pop bottle) after feeding.

As I mentioned earlier, I use a similar method with a cut out water bottle. If the heads are still closed, I just put in a few mysis with the turkey baster, and blow the water around a bit inside. That seems to trigger the feeding response and the heads then come out. After a few minutes, I release more mysis, and let them eat as much as they want. When they are finished, I just lift off the plastic water bottle, and the other fish and shrimp clean up any left overs.

With mine, the heads are usually open in the mornings. I assume that during the night, they must be trying to catch some errant pods swimming by. And, when I feed, they stay open longer. If I don't feed, they usually close up after the lights are on for a while.

I have been amazed though, by how much my colony can consume with one feeding. Usually it is almost a full cube of mysis. They just pull it in, and stuff it down.

Well my dozen or more special of tubasstrea colonies some with over 100 heads and I've had for a very long time are open 24/7 , feeding them from a bottle is not a concern for me as I don't have animals that steal food.

Heres how suncorals work.

They need energy to open, they get back this energy from food, when they come out. And theres no food they use energy that's not replaced. If this happens to often they shut down.

When a suncoral doesn't come out it starts to provide energy the only way left, which by this time is to eat themselves from the inside out.

I'm not saying that a 2l bottle wont feed your corals I'm.saying there's am easier way to train without polluting your water quality.

Go to RC and read on the Tupperware method, unsing this method guarantees food several times a day and no wasted energy, after a week or two of doing this your suncprals will be open 24 hrs a day whether you feed or not.

I collect tubastrea and dendrophyllia have many species of both, fact is food is food, the idea is to feed the coral not the tank.

For me I use coral snow, fauna Marin and mysis, 2 out of 3 of these wont float nicely in a 2l bottle.

Not to mention not everyone has a sandbed....on RC we on the nps forumns decided while the 2l works its not as effective as the Tupperware method

, this method I
s designed to feed all day with as much pollution as possible and not pollute the tank.

Now what do you do when the suncoral doesn't eat or wont come out??



Also suncorals love flow it brings food to them.

I just fed mine this morning, so here are a couple more pics. Like I said, I first drop in a few mysis, and when all the heads are out I feed them the rest. I blow around the mysis inside the bottle a few times until all the mysis are stuck to some waiting head. Some actually eat more than one. You can see how bloated a few of them are, as they gobble them down.

Today, I fed a complete cube, and they ate up every last mysis, none was left over. So they were definitely hungry.

Bottle on, added a few mysis and heads all out now ready for feeding.
http://i1304.photobucket.com/albums/...psce58c2f3.jpg

Full cube of mysis in, and feeding under way.
http://i1304.photobucket.com/albums/...ps36f9c05e.jpg

Denny, I am not saying the in tank bottle method is better. I haven't tried your method, so can't speak to that. But it is interesting that you say yours are open 24/7. Mine are definitely not. I also have some Dendros though, and they are open 24/7.

Anyway, at least we know a couple methods that can be used. They are definitely a colourful addition to a tank, and not hard to keep healthy.

Oh, I should add that I have never had a situation where they didn't open up or fail to feed.

Great read right here :P

i understand , and the bottle trick does indeed work provided your suncoral is healthy enough to come out and feed ,fact is the bottle is only to keep others from robbing the food as suncorals take food quite aggressively and have no problem swallowing a piece of mysis in less than a few seconds.

ive tried maybe 20 different approaches to feeding and i want to explain that the tupperware method outside the aquarium is not for easy feeding but to guarantee they get food the whole time they are out , this has to be done more than once and usually for a week or two consistently, once done they will stay out 24hrs a day(provided your have nutrients or food particles in the water column)regardless of the intensity of light.


right now i have more suncorals then i have any other corals except zoos, i collect them and try to have as many pieces and species as possible and have put countless hours into understanding why they feed, how they feed and what keeps them out continuously.

once you get to this number feeding and waiting for them to come out is time consuming and doesant work with my regular scheule and work hours.

by using the tupperware method i can get new specimens to be out and feeding for days on end continuously , now since they are getting food the whole time they are out as opposed to whenever food is manual fed, they are getting a constant supply of energy and using less to open as they stay open.


after i do the tupperware acclimation method they are out full force , they never close my corals dont know day from night as long as i provide food daily they stay out all the time.

when i buy a new specimen they are not always ready to take food and need to be acclimated , average acclimation time on fresh suncorals from the wild is about 2 weeks, this includes dendros which can at times be as hard as suncorals to train.


now once they are acclimated i can feed them in the display in which i switch to pellets its less pollution and easier to feed then frozen, i do the same for my dendros, when im feeding the fish frozen the suncorals and dendros get some of that as well.


i should also mention that i run a continuous feed via 2 brs perialistic dosers that feed the tank 24 hrs a day im sure this helps keep them open as well when target feeding isnt going on.

my tank is mostly zoanthid and nps dominant with several or more carnations,tubastreas,dendros and gorgonians plus some others.


feed daily if you can once in the morning and once at night, they will have more energy, when they close they use energy thats not needed and when they stay open they dont use the energy it takes to open, all of this energy has to be replaced via feeding and is used towards feeding.

some pieces are very hard to train im currently doing the tupper ware method on a dendro i picked up about 3 mths ago it still does not stay open and barely feeds, on rc there are cases of people going 6mths and more with this method trying to bring back a specimen that is eating its self from thew inside out.



beautiful corals , my tubastreas are dropping babies everywhere in my tank not to mention the origional colonies grow very fast , they are a great coral to take up dark places.


the doser is mainly for gorgs and other nps that feed on food in the microns, but the suncorals use that food as well.


and of course a few pics heheh, sorry its a cheap phone camera :)



cheers and enjoy guys!

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nps are beautiful corals and are getting easier and easier to keep then they were years ago , keeping them longterm isnt a dream anymore but rather a reality that anyone can do , the same is said for alot of gorgs that we couldnt keep years ago:)

Denny I tried your method yesterday I added on cube of blood worm one mysis and feed continuously for three hours. After puting back into DT they were well swollen

Worked great and ill def continoue

haha wanna buy a suncoral frag im about to make a bunch from random colors:)

youll have to do that for a little bit , the swollen part is a dead giveaway that they are able to recover.

if you can nick add something that pollutes the water like the juice from the mysis or a product like reef roids, since its outside the tank pollution is the goal.

also i should note that overfeeding your suncorals and dendros can mean death as the food rots before it gets digested inside the coral, cases of this are rare:)


good luck guys and cheers:)

Haha. Now that's a hijack if I ever saw one. Lol

Yes I use the juice to excite them. And I'll try this every other day. Should each head head eat or does one feed the other like lps

Totally agree with that. I got mine in a rescue from an LFS, where it was dying, or so they thought. Since I already had a Dendro, I thought I would take it home and see what I could do with it. To my surprise, it opened up and had no trouble getting it to start feeding.

I think if I fed it every day, it would stay open more too. But even as it is, (feeding every few days) it is open quite a bit, esp in the mornings. However, have to admit to being a little lazy, so want to see how this infrequent feeding works out. Right now they seem to be very healthy, and the tubes growing fatter and longer.

Here is a pic of my Dendro. It is always open. I have 2 large heads, and about 4 baby ones. Feeding it is a lot easier though, as I just target feed it (no bottle) a few mysis when I feed the rest of the fish. It has big heads and tentacles, so consumes a mysis immediately before any fish can steal it.
http://i1304.photobucket.com/albums/...pse808e5f1.jpg

Hehe nice one Denny but my tank is over stocked, I wouldn't mind taking ur fruit loops when u have them ready :)

youll have to see tucan sam for that one lol ;PPPP

thats sure one beauty of a dendro:)

every head does need to eat but not at the sale times , basically by feeding every day you allow the heads that dont get fed to feed the next day or day after , so say if i feed every three days then the heads that dont eat dont eat again untill 3 days later , suncorals can go a long time without food but if too long go into hibernation ....this is when the process starts over.


its easier to just not miss a feeding then to try to recover feeding forget.


suncorals also base their growth off of feedings , so if you want lots of growth or even for them to drop clones lots of food is the key.


overall suncorals and dendros are the easier of the nps corals but do require some consistency.


try hand feeding a dendro colonie pellets for 3 mths straight for hours on end lol gets frustrating but the reward is great and the beauty cant be beat:)

had a sun coral once, those things are pigs seems mine just ate, and ate don't think it was ever full!

At the risk of hijacking this thread even further, wanted to ask you the best way to frag a Sun Coral. Do you just use a cutter snip, or a scalpel or what? Not sure how hard the skeleton is, and don't want to kill it or make a mess.

depends on the type if its branching i just use frag cutters if its the matting type then i use a diamond blade on a angle grinder cutting from the bottom i make a slice from east to west about 1/2" or so deep depending on how thick it is.

i then use a flat top screwdriver and place it into the grove i cut, i then twist the flattop leaving me with 2 halves, if i need to make multiple frags then i make a grid of lines with my grinder then use the screwdriver to break multiple pieces.

the idea of cutting from the bottom to the top is to not damage the flesh with the hot blade so basically like scoring a line but its deep and breaking it.

any attached flesh can be cut cleanly with a new razorblade.

i take the same approach with zoos as well:)

of course they will....they are not photosynthetic so will grab as much of a meal as they can , but be carefull you can overfeed which can lead to other huge problems including death of the coral:)

Thanks. Sounds like the skeleton is not too hard/thick then if you can use a cutter. I've had a to use a chisel and hammer on my bubble coral to break it apart. This should be a lot easier. And sawing a groove on the bottom makes sense, too, if necessary.