Tubastrea help!!

[Kirsty]

I have recently rescued a orange sun polyp from the LFS, approx. half of the coral has deteriorated white skeleton with bits of orange tissue, (no polyps) and half have sunken polyps, and I can see yellow down in the centers of the tube, but they are far from expanding to the top. It is possible to rescue this poor thing? any advise is greatly appreciated. I am have a mature reef of 4 years with no problems. Thanks everyone

 

[Alex1]

How much are you feeding it? It is nonphotosynthetic so you need to feed it if you are not already. If you want it to open spray some food on it and it should trigger it to open. Once opened you have to feed it directly with bring mysis or another food that the polyps can take. I was giving chuncks of krill to mine and for the size of the polyp they can take a lot of food. They should be fed everyother day atleast.

Alex

 

[slojmn1]

I actually float my sun coral in a tupperwear container during feeding times with tank water in it and squirt my homemade fish brew over the coral. This triggers a feeding response within 15 minutes. When the polyps are open I then use my trusty, dusty turkey baster to squirt more food over the polyps and to circulate the water in the container all around so all polyps get a lot of food. I am a bit anal about all of this and let my guy feed for a few hours in peace. If I left him in the tank all the fish would make short order of the food on his polyps. I then return him to the tank and discard the water from the tupperwear container. My guy is so used to this procedure that as soon as I lift him out of the tank and into the container he begins opening. I recently transferred him to my larger tank and it is a bit more difficult to get him in and out, he hits air more. So far he seems fine with the arrangement. These corals are more time consuming than most as each polyp needs nutrition. Mine has numerous baby buds all around the larger polyps. I am waiting for it to send out babies into the tank, it is pretty cool when that happens. Suddenly little babies will attach to the live rock in other areas. This does propose a challenge for my present feeding system but I am always up for a challenge. Good luck and I know the coral is better off with you than where it was.

 

[Kirsty]

thank you so much for both your comments, even after two days of attempted turkey blasting, it seems to be puffing up and changing shape, I will do the floating container method for sure - it was great to hear detailed comments -
thanks again
kirsty