Sun Coral propagation?

[canada911]

Hello,
I want to start a bit of coral farming on Sun Corals, but first I need one!
Someones knoes where I could get a little frag of it? My LFS doesnt have any for know... And if I order one It will probably be a big one, not only a frag, so probalby expensif too... (I guess if I dont find any frag I'll still try to order one...) So any ideas?

So for the propagation, I heard 2 things:
-That this coral produces larva for reproducing himself... and that this can be provocated by stoping water flow(pumps) a couple of hours each 15 days...
-It produce new polyps at his base... So can I just frag them by cutting a couple of polyps???

What could be the possible fastest method??? Anyone with experience with those??

THanks

[danny zubot]

Sun polyp are a hard coral to frag because they appear to almost grow out of the rock. Unless there is noticable branching of the rock they grow in I wouldn't bother trying to cut them out. Good luck inducing spawning though, let us know if you are successful.

[Chad]

I have a orange sun coral that has spawned onto my near by black sun coral.. I didn't do anything. so, go figure... I will try and get photos but they are so tiny.

[canada911]

^
Wow! I heard that those coral used to spawn at the fool moon in the night... So the perfect way to stimulate it would be to stop the water flow for a couple of hour (to simulate the calm sea water) each 15 days (the periods of full moon I think...) Thats what I readed....

Can I ask you what are your water spec?? The temp for exemple, and you are sure that you didnt did nothing particular the same or previous day? Like tank maintenance (shuting down a pump, etc...) or letting the ligh on longer temporarly? Was it a fool moon outside?

And what do you do whan it spawn??? Does the larvae be surviving? Do you absolutely need 2 sun coral? Thats pretty weird having larvae for corals... I'm not sure that I understand...

That would be cool if you could get those pics!!

So its realllllly impossible to frag the sun coral??? No one attempted it?? ('cause I supposed its pretty rare that they make brench type growing pattern like Danny said...)

[Chad]

I have never seen a orange / yellow branching sun coral, but the brown / black ones I have are branching. If I wanted I suppose I could snip a branch off.. but I have never done so.

The sun coral in question is in a tank I treat rather poorly sad to say.. I don't give it the attention it deserves. and it sometimes gets neglected ie: leaving the light on all night.. it is just a holding tank and I have the sun coral in there because I ran out of room in my nano.

Anyways.. I suppose I could have contributed to the spawning somehow, but I have no idea what did it. I just lifted my black sun coral one day and saw dozens of orange sun corals all over the bottom.. where there were absolutely none before..

I'll try and get that pic tomorrow.

[canada911]

cool! Dozen of them?? Awsome that means that spawning can really work!
hmmm, if one day you have an idea of what could induced the spawning, I would be really interessted to know!

Hmm, having light all night could be a sort of immitation of the full moon...

Do you target feed youre sun corals?

THanks!
Waiting for the pics

[KrazyKuch]

I have Yellow Orange and Black sun corals....... the yellow and orange grow like right out of the rock and the black is more of a branching....I have never tried to frag them before cause It doesn't look like you can without killing them.....

If this spawning is true I must try it someday!!!!

[canada911]

Seems that Fraging is possible! Look at this:
http://www.fragexchange.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=2143

Now more info on the spawning process!?

[KrazyKuch]

He is only chipping the sun coral with a chunk of rock....for me the only piece that is attached to rock is them main branch!!!

[Chad]

Originally Posted by canada911

Do you target feed youre sun corals?

The chances of a sun coral surviving in your tank without target feeding is slim to none, otherwise they will just waste away.

Sun corals are not photosyntetic (sp)