Reef Discussion

[rosechaser]

I picked up a sun coral that the owner had not been able to look after.

A week later and all the hair algae covering it has gone and the polyps are starting to extend and show more colour...I have been target feeding reef roids for now....any better suggestions.

So a couple of questions please.

There are about 35 to 40 heads (not sure of right word) and started with 15 orange ones now up to 18 but these may have been hidden before.

Of the rest some are dark or black ... will these turn into "heads"? or are they dead?

and some light grey or white are these dead?...will the dead ones if that is what hey are be colonized by new heads, or will they just remain as is...in that case should I cut them off?

Any tips appreciated

 

[jashay]

from what I know of sun coral its nocturnal so feeding would be done then. but feeding is good, if its eating your getting result.

light grey/white is generally bleached/dead unfortuantely I have seen this all to much in recent times.
from what I understand is that if there is a dead section but there is live healthy tissue there it will eventually grow over. this is how the reefs are made, corals die, then regrow and die, regrow building reefs.

 

[Agent M]

Frozen mysis shrimp is a great food for sun corals. Until the coral has recovered I would continue feeding it during lights out, but once you are happy with its recovery, you can start putting food in the water column around the coral during the day to entice it to extend its polyps. If you do this for a few weeks additional to night feeding, the polyps will start coming out during the day.

 

[ifishnow]

I trained mine in a small seperate tank(38lt) with a tiny led light, you will see why in a minute....I didn't treat it like it was fragile or anything...I had some cheap coral food in a bottle and every night I would "bomb" the tank with it.."lights out" on tank but room lights on...

Any bits of skeleton that looked dodgy I knocked off with a screwdriver...keep any healthy fragments, even if they are only 2mm square...they will regenerate new heads in their own right. I placed all of this in the little tank and started feeding as above...mind you you don't have to do it every night but most nights. Also just do little water changes every couple of days for obvious reasons. You will notice it will start to respond to the "smell" of the food going in. Once this happened I started giving it bits of blended marinara mix once fully opened.

I started to turn the little led light on at night and bombing the tank during this time...it would come out then so I would feed it the mix...in this period the fragments were also throwing out a tiny head or two...feed these heads marinara as well...you'd be suprised the size of things they can eat lol.

Fast forward.....In DT and all the bits and pieces come out at any time, even when I give fish pellets..they can sense the food in the water. My tiny little fragment has two heads on it and has attacted to the bit of rock I jambed it into..this started as a fragment with no heads.

I don't fuss over the pieces in the DT just make sure they get solid frozen food when the fish do...I used tubing and a syringe...the tubing you can put close to the tenticles to feed and it's more flexible....

A bigger piece of my original suncoral when lights were on and after fish were given pellets...