how to feed sun coral???

[osakamy]

anybody out there know how to feed sun coral? they said that you have to put a piece of shrimp at their mouth but they don't open at all and when they do open, you move the food near their mouth they will close.please help??

 

[ak_reefer]

Sun corals can be fed by blowing brine shrimp across the cups. They need to be fed when there tentacles are extended. You cant just feed one of the cups they all need to be fed. Hope this helps.

 

[nm reef]

I've got no hands on experience keeping sun corals...but as soon as I locate a suitable speciman I plan to add one....everything I've learned about them indicates that they require direct feedings when the polyps are open and extended...my plan is to feed them brine/mysis soaked in zoe(with dt's phytoplankton).....I'll use my trusty turkey baster to blow this across the polyps ...seems they need to have each individual polyp fed in this manner to keep 'em happy and healthy.....anyone else?????

 

[lettheirberock]

ive heard they like it when you stir up the substrate.

 

[q]

I can't think of any reason why you would want to stirr up the substrate. Only thing I can add is if the tenticals are not out then you can blow some of the brine shrimp juices across the colony to induce a feeding response.

 

[lettheirberock]

a friend of mine had one and its polyps would always extend when he stired up the substrate. not alot of stiring required ,just wisk around the surface so that any excess detrius becomes airborne. just an idea

 

[marek]

Why do you guys want/buy corals that YOU KNOW you have to hand feed? Am I missing something here? Aren’t most of us already tired as it is keeping our hands in our tanks for hours doing silly stuff like moving things around, that you want to go out of your way to dip your hands in during the day and stress other inhabitants to feed some clumsy coral that cant even synthesize enough zooxanthaela from our intense MH systems, which we are running for hours as it is???. Screw it! Now don’t get me wrong, my inhabitants are getting plenty of plankton mixes, like Dt phytoplankton and Tahitian Blend from brineshripdirect.com. Although I do feed large particulate stuff occasionally to individual things, once a couple weeks or so, like button polyps, anemones etc... I'd be damned to bring something that always requires me to hand feed it every other day and stress the crap of my reef population during their favorite daylight hours all because one coral looks good for feeding… plus, why pollute their water with God knows what oils from our dirty human skins? Hmm.. I guess I’m really just venting, I mean who cares really?? Do what you want…

 

[hondo]

I've had one for about 8 months now and have only directly fed it once or twice with DT's. I have it placed in an area of high current in front of a PH. The polyps on mine only come out at night usually about 10:00pm when the lights go out. When I first got it the rock had polyps (about 8 total) on about 1/2 of one side only. Now it has about 15 (many are smaller than the original)polyps spread across the visible side of the rock. Can't really say I would recomend this coral as it's most active at night when the lights are off. The rest of the time it looks like a rock with orange bumps on it (the polyps are bright yellow though when extended).