Tue, 02/08/2005 - 22:53

Suncorals have become more popular recently, so I thought I'd post this in my Personal Logs again for any new visitors to my site.

Here is the link to my page about my Suncoral. Included are two links to other articles that are must-reads, in my opinion.

I have a video of my feeding it: Feeding a Suncoral 3.8 megs

And here are a few recent images with the lights on.

To feed this coral, I choose to do so at night. My coral is closed all day, and the fish pay it no attention. At night while the fish sleep, I can focus on the coral. I cover it with a dome (top of a 2-liter bottle).

I thaw some mysis and sometimes toss in some cyclop-eeze. This is thawed for 10 minutes in a small bowl with tank water. Once the food is ready, using a small turkey baster, I squirt some food all over the coral so that every polyp gets some food. 5 minutes later, I repeat this, and again 5 minutes after that. 30 minutes later I take off the dome.

Currently I'm feeding my coral about 2 times a week, but I think I'll bump it up to 4 times a week due to a thread I saw on RC where the suncoral has been releasing babies.

If you have a new suncoral, you'll need to coax the feeding response. The best way I know of doing this is to squirt the mysis flavored water over the coral a few times over 10 minutes to get it to open up some. Do this every day at the exact same time and it will learn to open up on schedule. Once it has opened, even just a few polyps, feed those polyps. Odds are the rest will soon get the news and start opening up so as to not miss the meal.

Mine is directly under the MH but on the substrate. Originally it sat on the sand, but after a while it settled too deeply and some of the base polyps died. So I suggest you place it on a flat small rock. Be sure you have a way to cover this coral with a dome, to keep fish and crabs/shrimp away during the feeding process. This coral doesn't need light at all, but you do have to have access to feed it so put it somewhere convenient.

I turn off the pumps when I feed it sometimes, but other times I'll just leave them running. I have fed mine without the dome, but the fish (Naso, Bengaii Cardinals) tend to know what I'm doing and steal food.

Some have trained their suncoral to be open all day. Since I have so much activity in my tank, it is easier to feed this coral at night and enjoy it during the darker hours.