target feeding sun coral

Just picked up a sun coral frag today. Very colorful yellow and orange. This is my first coral I have to feed. I picked up some cylopeeze. And in also have some rods original food. Do you guys have any tips or suggestions on target feeding? I used a 5ml syringe that comes in toddler medicine and attached a short piece of airline tubing to it and it seemed to work pretty well.

 

Aquarium Corals: A Look at the Sun Corals — Advanced Aquarist | Aquarist Magazine and Blog

My feeding method goes as follows, and I find new heads popping up all the time:

Coral frenzy around the closed/open polyps, turn off all pumps/water movers.

20 minutes later the coral is usually all open, and I feed Mysis. If some heads are still not open, I baste some of the Mysis defrosting water onto the coral. I have found it opens up the most 30 minutes or so before lights off, thus making it the best time to feed.

My colony opens up every night with some polyps open all day too.


IMO, cyclopeeze and rods will be good foods to initiate a feeding response, however they need meatier foods such as live brine shrimp or frozen Mysis.

BTW, sun coral is NPS (non-photosynthetic) not LPS, so they will rely completely on feeding, rather than light like most corals.

 

Seems nifty to me. I feed my sun coral in the early evenings with a very narrow 10in 10ml baster and now it opens lovely every evening.

 

I only thought it was a LPs because of what I read on live aquaria......

Daisy-bright beauty, gently swaying polyps, unique feeding habits and low light requirements make the Tubastrea Yellow Tube Coral a perfect LPS coral for the deepest zones of your reef aquarium.
Also known as the Sun Polyp Coral, or Yellow Cup Coral, its genus name, Tubastraea, is derived from the Latin words tubus (tube) and astron (star), describing its skeletal structure which is tubular, with stars at the tip of each tube.

In the wild, the Tubastrea Yellow Tube Coral is often found on reef ledges or steep reef slopes. It is a colonial coral with a sunny yellow coloration when open. The center skeleton is round with the tubes branching off in all directions.

The Yellow Tube Coral can be quite fragile and must be handled with extra care. When placing in the aquarium, it must be picked up by its underside. It should have moderate to high water current combined with low lighting levels. It will also benefit from the addition of calcium, strontium, and other trace elements to the water. It is a hardy coral for the reef aquarium, but is classified as moderate because of the special care that it requires.

It is one of the few corals that does not contain a symbiotic algae, so it must be fed vitamin-enriched brine shrimp or micro-plankton from an eye dropper directly to each one of its polyps. It will usually only expand its polyps in the evening or when it is hungry.

 

Its actually a large polyp stony coral which is non photosynthetic. There are also soft and small polyp stonies which don't use photosynthesis. NPS and LPS are classifications for unrelated aspects of coral.

 

I guess I'm the only one who doesn't lump them together lol.

I'm not saying they aren't Large Polyp Stony corals, just that they aren't what is commonly called LPS but rather NPS (non-photosynthetic), I guess you could call the aLPS (azooxanthellae).

For the sake of ease, I consider anything that doesn't get energy from light, NPS, regardless of polyp size or skeletal structure/lack there of, then photosynthetic corals into their respective types (SPS, LPS, or softies).

Sorry for the confusion, I thought you were putting them with corals like frogspawn, torch etc.

 

Thanks for the clarification. I'm fairly new to corals and was just going by what live aquaria said.

 

No problem, sun coral are extremely hardy and are nice because its a beautiful coral that doesn't need a 500$ lighting system lol just make sure you stay on top of feeding. I feed mine 5 times a week or so and I've actually seen polyps that have budded off the colony, which is asexual reproduction for this coral, and I believe it has released planulae larvae which have grown into new polyps (sexual reproduction).

 

Awesome. Yes mine stays closed most of the day till night time when I feed and it opens right up. Mine is. Orange and yellow I've not seen any like it. I love how colorful it is. I've been told by locals its not an easy coral to have but I see it as a challenge for myself.

 

My colony has yellow polyps with orange/pink tubes. Usually opens around 11:30-12am and lights are off around 1 am. (I'm a late person, lights don't come on til 2pm).
Heres some pics of when I first got it (month or so ago) since then, most of the tubes have added anywhere from 2 to 4 new heads, and its also fattened up pretty well.

Front

Side

I think it is considered hard because of the effort required to keep it. Other than that, its an easy coral, doesn't require light, pretty tolerant, heck mine has aiptasia living amongst it and the coral doesn't mind. Give it good flow, and good feedings, and it'll grow like crazy.