new sun coral won't eat

[bumreef]

we are new to this hobby and are delighted to find this website. We have a 65 gallon tank that has been set up for about 3 months ... we have a few fish and a few corals .. we got an orange sun coral last week and were told to feed it every other day .. but it won't eat at all ... the little yellow finger things don't even come out at all ... we have tried an eyedropper and an inverted pop bottle ..we just got some new food to try today ... "marine snow"? ... any suggestions out there that we have not yet tried.
Carla

[loganj]

Where is your sun coral located in the tank? It needs to be shaded...they don't like bright light. If it's in a brightly lit area, that may be why it's not eating. Mine is shaded pretty well and it usually only comes out after the lights have gone out. How long have you had the coral? It may take a week or two for it to get happy and decide to come out. Mine stayed closed up for about a week at first. I feed it Kent Phytoplex, CS Live Coral Food, newly hatched brine shrimp, and my custom mixture which consists of whatever I can find in the seafood section at Krogers. I dump it (shrimp, clams, scallops, fish filets, OSI marine flake, Seachem Reef Plus, ect...) into the blender and puree it. I also mix some clam juice with it when I can get it. Then I freeze it in ziploc bags for later use. I just break off a chunk, thaw it in some tank water, and dump it in. You have to be careful with this as too much can foul the tank. If the polyps aren't at least partially extended, it won't eat anything. You can try to entice it with a small amount of food and see if it will open up some...that works with mine sometimes when I can't be here at night to feed it. Good luck with it and keep us posted .
Logan J

[reefrunner69]

IME, the also like a pretty good water flow to stimulate the polyps into opening and looking for food. If there isn't a good chance (the conditions aren't right) of them catching some food, it isn't worth the energy to open up.

[bumreef]

hi again .. I hope I am doing this "reply" thing correctly. We have the sun coral on the bottom ... in the open .. because we have been trying the pop bottle upside down to try to get the food right on top of it. Should we move it to a more shaded spot when we are not trying to feed it? to feed it with the pop bottle we have to have it in the open. We have had it for 8 days now and for the first time last evening I saw some of the little finger things open ... I didn't see it eat anything but atleast they looked more open. I was worried it would die after not eating for a whole week but the guy at the aquarium store said to give it another week. How can we tell when the open finger things are actually eating? will we see it grab the food? (we should have waited on getting the coral till we had more experience with the reef tank but it was so cool I had to get it!) Thank you for responding to my question.
Carla

[reefrunner69]

How can we tell when the open finger things are actually eating? will we see it grab the food?

If you are fairly observant, yes you should see it grab the food and eat it. IT is important that each polyp get fed. This coral is non-photoythetic and cannot produce it's own food.

we should have waited on getting the coral till we had more experience with the reef tank but it was so cool I had to get it!

Yes you should have waited, this coral is, IMO, for experienced reef keepers.

If the polyps are extending, it will eat, try to feed when the polyps are out.

[loganj]

Mine seems to do best when shaded all the time.
Logan J

[bumreef]

Hi .. just wanted to let you know the sun coral is doing much better. We are still hand feeding it ... putting it in a little bowl and feeding each polyp ... but the polyps open fairly often (mostly when the light is not on). I think we'll hand feed it a while longer and then move it to a more shaded spot (it's kind of in the open now just so we can take it out to feed it) and try just feeding it regular.
Also ... we have more stuff now and ... more questions. If I have several questions should I ask them all under one category or do just one question per post and in the correct category? Or maybe just put everything under the "getting started" category? .. I have a question about a Xenia ... I think I'll make a separate post for that.
Thanks again. This is a good place .. keep up the good work.
Carla