anorexic candy canes

my candy cane corals seem like they are starving to death, just slowly wasting away. when i feed my corals, the mouth will open but no sweepers. i get the best response with kent marine zooplankton. i hear good things about rod's food and coral frenzy but haven't tried those yet.
my main concern is the sweeper tentacles, if they don't extend the coral can't grab and hold on to anything to eat. i feel that it may be that they're too weak to extend the sweepers.
does anybody know how (and with what) i can force feed them to plump them back up?
i would post pic, but i can't find the camara.

 

What is your lighting situation? Perhaps they are being given too much. Candy canes don't require heavy lighting. As for feeding, it should be done at night, when all the lights have been off for at least an hour. My book says that candy canes do need supplementary food but I went months once without feeding mine directly and they were fine. Without a picture, I would guess your prob is more related to lighting and flow.

 

I have had my cc for only one month, the tentacles come out a few hours after the lights are out. I feed them brime and mysis shrimp from a baster. They are already dividing into new heads. I would wait until night and try to feed them.

 

i have them in my frag/refuge tank....its a 18 gal sterilite container (like a rubbermaid plastic). it has about 6 inches of sand, the canes are glued to plugs that sit on eggcrate (about 1/2 inch above sand). i'm using nova extreme t5 lighting 36 watt (one 18 watt white, one 18 watt blue) that sits even with the top of container, about 3 inches above water. the top of the canes are about 4 inches below water surface.
my display tank is 29 gal (18 inches tall, 12 inches wide, 30 inches long). i use one hamilton reefstar metal hylide fixture with double ended 250 watt 14k bulb (about 10 inches from top of tank). i have one of those DEVIL damsel aka..velvet damsil about 4 inches long, that kept knocking them over(i think it was nipping at them also), so i put them in the refuge). i should get rid of the fish, but we been through alot together, had it for 2 years now...such a very hardy fish!!

 

I give my candy canes pieces of krill.....I just gently place a small piece on the head and they will grab on. Be careful to not force it in. My CC are big though so you might want to start off with what somebody else said and just squirt some mysis at night. Turn off your flow, get a turkey baster and gently squirt a little onto the polyps. Then once they start to grow a little add a few pieces of krill here and there.

I only feed Rods food (in my reef tank) to the fish. I also supplement Rods coral food in every once in a while and then I just bought coral freenzy. I am going to do a little experiment and only feed coral freenzy for Coral food for a while (with the exception of krill to pieces that require a little more meat) and will see how that does. But I do LOVE Rods...and would highly recommend that

 

you might actually want to research a little about the plastic that the sterlite is made of....there was an article in here about plastics and how to look to see which ones are safe to use as some will leach phosphates and other bad chemicals into the water.

I was told by somebody that you should only use food grade quality plastics for storing water in...IE those expensive Brute trashcans, otherwise it will leach out phosphates and then will eventually crack. That might also be a problem with the candy canes?

 

Plastic items will have a Resin Identification Code embossed into it. A list of codes is here. Resin identification code - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but you are correct, you only want to use food grade plastics because the plastizers used to make cheaper plastic will leach phosphorus, DEHA, and other nasties.

 

I actually used one of the sterilite containers as a sump when I had my 55 for a couple of years with no ill effects. This is good advice though. I didn't research it at all and got lucky

 

Were they in the main tank at all? The only problem I have had with my canes is when they were stung by a Rhodactis mushroom. I moved the mushroom and they are coming back very well now. If your params are stable and within recommended ranges, then maybe the spectrum of the sump light is too broad (e.g. 10000K vs. 14000K).