How to feed Corals?

[LiveRock]

Hello mariners

I have a sun coral but can't seem to feed him right.

Is there a proven technique, tool, or method that will do it with minimum disruption to the coral, and low cost?

Thank you very much!

[Morgan]

I use a tweezer to pick up the mysis and feed directly to the polyps.

The disadvantage is that you get your hand wet.

I would suggest that you place it at a position so that it can be easily fed.

Some of forum recommend that you use the top half of a drink bottle to cover over the coral and feed from the opening at the top so as the fishes will not get to the food. Have not try it out yet.

[LiveRock]

I read in some web sites that there is a tool called the 'turkey blaster' that they used to feed the sun coral but have never ever seen such a product in Singapore LFS.

I tried doing a DIY flexible tube with attached to a plastic soft drink bottle cut in half but it is not effective as the food doesn't go down the tube. I have to blow into the tube but it food just spread all over.....

[hongqixian]

It is a turkey baster and used to add sauce on turkeys, just a sort of syringe/pipette like thing. Live rock, can you even get the polyps to fully open in the first place? Try the bottle thing but without a tube. Push in mysis through the top by hand. You should keep the coral in the open. It can get used to light (but cannot make food with algae). This makes for easier feeding.

[Morgan]

LiveRock

Does your sun coral open its polyps to feed?

A turkey blaster is like a gigantic syringe as what qixian say use for cooking.

[robe]

I am hand feeding mine every other day. You can train it to open up even during the day. Mine is sitting on top of the rocks under 400 watts of MH lights with no adverse effect. the number of polyps tripled over the year so far. I feed minced shrimps using those plastic forceps sold in fish shops.

[Achilles Tang]

Because my fishes and shrimps are extremely greedy during feeding time... there is no way any food, even if placed directly on the polyps of my sun coral, will be left there for even 2 seconds!

What I have resorted to do is to take out my sun corals, and place them into a shallow container and put my mysis shrimp cubes in them and swirl around till all the polyps have grabbed one to a piece of mysis...

when they are done feeding... I put them back into the tank.

A little troublesome but I had no choice!

Oh... on a little note... there was once when I forgot to put them back into the tank and went to bed... next morning, the container was full of mysis shrimp again... they have vomitted everything out and the water was very polluted! They must have been very unhappy and there was a bit of die-off of some polyps..

I was kicking myself so hard because my sun corals were beautiful!

[Reefgang]

Sunflower Coral are to me one of the most attractive corals when in full glory.

Mine had to be enticed with food otherwise it will never open. May be I should give more food training like how Robe does. I have placed the sun coral near to the surface and I squeeze shrimp/head juice into the tank. Abt 15-20minutes later, most of the polyps begin to expose. I will chop the shrimp/prawn into tiny pieces and feed the polyps one by one.

Just like what Achilles said, the dominant rascals of the tank like fire clown, zebra damsel, yellow wrasse and even blue tang don't give any chance to the sun corals. Some of my fish are even clever enuf to bite at the polyps , making them close and hoping to have all the food for themselves.

The sun coral has been the same size since I bought it abt 6 mths ago. Perhaps more regular feeding might help with growth.

Reefgang

[leejwa]

I use phytoplex by Kent Marine and it works just fine...all my corals are happy and blooming!