Feeding Orange Sun Coral

Hi there, I bought a orange sun coral about two weeks ago. I feed it every second night about 2 hours after lights out but would like to train it to eat during daytime. Anybody who can tell me how I should train it to eat during daytime?

 

pic?

 

I would cut a clear plastic liter soda bottle in half. Place the top half over the coral, introduce meaty sea foods into the container and let the coral sit like that for a while, 30 min. Do this 3 times a week and you should start to see a feeding response.

 

Thanks, Corailline. Yes I am feeding them by means of a plastic bottle that was cut into half, but I have read somewhere that they can be trained to feed when the lights are still on. Would be interesting to know they can be trained for that. (Current situation is that I have to wait about 90 minutes after lights out to start the feeding process).

 

When I feed my tank regularly. I always squirt little food in and wait good 30 min before go back to tank. If sun coral not open squirt little more in tank then wait. The coral will sense food and open eventually. Maybe not the first day trying daytime feeding. I can squirt little food in at anytime and sun will open 30 min later. I do not have a consistent time to feed.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I will keep trying and hope for the best.

 

I target feed my Tubastrea corals thawed and rinsed frozen mysis or New Era Marine Pellets 1x/week in the evenings when my main lights are off and the tentacles come out.

 

what are you feeding your sun corals?

How I have trained our sun corals to open during the day, is simply feed them in the morning. We have a NPS tank, so we have A LOT of nutrients in our tank at all times, but we usually start training them by each morning add several drops of food into the water about an hour or so after the lights come on. We then target feed each polyp with a medicine dropper. Eventually after a while they will beging to have their polyps out all day.

IME it is best to use a variety of foods. We alternate what we feed them, but some of the foods we use is oyster feast, rotifers, cyclopeeze, zooplantos by brightwell, coral freenzy and reef pearls. Once we start seeing good polyp extension, we switch to meatier foods like mysis, brine and rods coral food. We usually mix a combo of all those foods.

Important to remember that you need to feed each and every polyp. They share a small percent of food, however in order to get the best growth, you do need to feed each polyp individually

I have tried to take the corals out and put them in a bowl of tankwater and feed that way, however I dont see very good PE this way. I have used the bottle method, but have found this way works best. Down side of this way to feed is a lot of extra waste nutrients in the tank...so you do need to have frequent water changes

here is a pic of our sun corals