sick sun coral

[runamukus]

I bought some sun coral, which looked ok at the LFS. When I got it ino the tank, they never opened up for feeding. First I figured it was simple acclimation. Then after a few days of not opening,(and YES I did check throughout the night hours to see if they opened then) and I thought maybe it is a bad sign, so I did some searching. Some say they could be starving and are too weak to bring out the tentacles to feed.

SO - I took them out and put them in a special little container for feeing. I placed cyclopleeze in the water to see if that would get them to open up. NOPE. But I did notice their little mouths puckering up.

SO - I thawed some frozen mysis shrimp and layed them on the heads that were most upright, and they did eat the shrimp! But they NEVER extended their tentacles.

My question is: Am I fighting an uphill battle? How hardy are these little fellers? I'm trying to feed them everynight and they'll eat a small mysis shrimp or two but that is about it. I'm wondering if anyone has rescued a sun flower coral before and if they have any suggestions to help me.

Is it okay to 'inject, (and gently I may add)' a mixture of cyclopleeze and mushed up mysis shrimp directly into their mouths? I'm afraid to do that thinking I may blow them up or something. Anyone who knows how to rescue them, please let me know cos I'm trying like crazy.

All water params are good, 0 everything. Other corals looking fine, just have zoo's, xenia, mushrooms, hammers and candycanes. All other livestock look perfectly happy. I really think I have a sick coral. The lighting is stock biocube ligting so I'm not blinding them. The water temp is 80. I upped the stock return pump with a more powerful pump to get better flow.

[justahobby]

My LFS has had a very nice looking frag of sun coral for at least a week. I asked if they opened up during the day and the reply was no. LFSes are not open 24/7. If the SC had set in the LFS for quite some time they may have never been feed since transport. It's definately something that we should all be leary of in the future. I bought mine from a MAAST member and they opened up immediatly during the day as if routine. I hope for the best and if they are eating I suspect after rountinely doing what you are now, will give you positive results. GL

[runamukus]

Quick update:

Last night one of the heads actually showed some tentacles for the first time! They were not all the way out (about half out) but I think that is a good sign that it may be getting stronger. I guess what I am doing is actually working. But I must say, it is a lot of hard work to get them to eat.

[runamukus]

Okay final follow up. The sun coral are opening up all the way now! They are beautiful indeed. It took almost two weeks of constant trying to feed them...now they will open up after the lights go off, (I'll have to train them to open up earlier) I think the way I saved them was by taking them out of the tank and putting them in a smaller container. Then I would take a small cut of cyclopleeze and put in the water. I would wait and their mouths would open. Then I would take mysis shrimp and lay it on the mouth until the mouth started to take in the shrimp (which could take up to 10 minutes!!) THEN I had to wait until each head swallowed the shrimp or else when I place them back in the tank the Nass. Snails would literally take the shrimp out their mouths.
AFTER a lot of hard work I saved these little fellers. I watched them slowly gain their tentacle extension over the last week and they are looking amazing.

[Captain Jack]

congrats, sounds like you did just the right thing. My sun corals were healthy, but i didn't catch them open the first couple days. Then i caught them open at around 10pm (which is pretty late for me on weeknights).

To get them on an early schedule, here is what worked for me: They were used to coming out about 30 min after the lights went off. So now I've just started turning off the lights right when I get home from work (and maybe adding some phyto). After the sun corals open up (15-30 min), I turn back on the lights and feed all the polyps and leave the lights on for several more hours and enjoy the pretty bright corals. They don't seem to mind the light at all and they stay out. I hope that eventually i can do something silimar during the morning, and coerce them to stay out all (mostly) day. we'll see.

[FossilReef]

Eventually those polyps will open up every time you feed, and if you feed 3-4 times a day they should be open almost continuously. Feeding this often also provides adequate nutrition for this coral to breed on a regular basis. A decent amount of larvae should settle out and survive despite all of the mechanical dangers found in your standard reef tank. I've also noticed that garlic incites a pretty strong feeding response in Tubastrea, so I add a drop to the food I mix up for them. For feed I use 1 cup peeled shrimp, 3/4 cup mullet, 1/4 cup Cyclop-eeze, 1/4 cup decapsulated Artemia eggs, 1/2 cup cockle or periwinkle (basically any mollusk except for squid), and 1/4 cup Coral Frenzy. Then I puree the mix and freeze it into cubes. Each cube is thawed in a turkey baster with water from the tank and a drop of garlic extract is added. If you wish you could probably put 1/2 tsp of gralic extract into the mix before you freeze it to make things simpler.
Enjoy your sun coral!
-Jason