Sun Coral

CloseupTubastrea spp.


Most popular non-photosynthetic coral: bright, eye-catching, hardy and widely available.

Unlike the most azooxanthellae corals, it has the stony skeleton inside and belongs to LPS - Large Polyped Stony corals. Being LPS, it has a lot of common with them in care. It should be fed the same kind of food (meaty mouth-sized pieces of seafood), only more frequently and in bigger quantities. On the bright side, it doesn't require light - perfect for a dark spots, where most other corals may not survive. Spots with sufficient flow, above the low flow.

It tolerates the light well, only in brightly lit tanks may be closed during the day, opening to feed only in the late evening. Not a cause for low light tanks: there it is open during daytime as well, as long as a food is present in water column. All photos at this website are made during daytime.

Another light consideration is that if it has exposed sleleton, in the well lit place algae may start to grow - from green hair to coraline algae. Take a closer look at your sun coral at arrival: it has white skeleton or, if skeleton is not visible, no green algae or coraline around it. But they will appear after being a month in the tank. May be they supposed to be kept out of light, considering this.

Sand, rock or bare bottom?

The main limitation of possible keeping it in the cave or under overhang, is that it should be easily accessible for a feeding: by hand, long tubing or a half of bottle. This should be done twice a week (or every day, if you are fit to do that). Sooner or later every mouth should be fed, and be accessible for doing this.

The sun coral, as any other coral, shouldn't have the live tissue buried in the sand, or have the mouth full of sand after a tank cleaning. Place yourself on its place: how would you feel in this situation?

Preferably, it should be glued to the solid rock surface. With time it will grow outside of the colony center, covering the rock. I'm talking about time frame 1 - 1.5 years, not several years, be ready. Nice thing to do is to glue it on a vertical surface or upside down. Less undigested food and debris will be trapped between polyps and rotting there. In case of mounting upside down, it may be more difficult to feed and observe.

Now the part, that frequently neglected to be mentioned: if the sun coral is placed on the branching rock, with a lot of small caves, some food will be lost there and, unless you have super efficient clean-up crew, will decompose there, affecting water quality. The solid piece of rock under the sun coral prevents this from happening, and will provide also the surface for a colony growth.

If placed on the bare bottom, starboard or glass, the coral will not grow onto them, if frequently displaced for a cleaning under it. Tried.

Feeding and nutrients export

This coral should be fed, in amounts sufficient for maintaining the plump appearance of polyps. This means roughy a couple of the shrimps (mysids or ocean plankton) per mouth each time. Multiply for a number of mouthes to get the final volume of the food required.

For lucky people, who have the very small colonies, this will not be too much and will not influence water quality drastically, even without a skimmer. Or if the hut method of feeding will be convenient enough. For the rest of us skimmer or massive water changes come to rescue.

What helps immensely, is the rinsing the food before feeding. A couple of times. Can't say, how it affects the nutricious value of the enriched food.

Example: Daniela Stettler's tank, which you can see here and here (13 MB pdf), was fed - you can imagine the amount of required food - every day, by frozen artemia (details are here), and you can see how crystal clear the water is. For those of us, who requires translation, the Google language tools can be used.

Filtration is also decribed very shortly, and for implementing in personal practice details are insufficient. Tried to find more on the web and by asking on forums - no luck. But again, the general idea was given.

In my case, with a big colony, rapidly reproducing in the tank, and three new starved colonies on recovery, that require every second day feeding, the water quality is an issue despite an oversized skimmer. Have to keep an eye on it all the time. But again, the water quality is maintained mainly by skimming and water changes.

Is this coral for you or not

Let see: one of the brighest corals, with large polyps (comparing to other non-photosynthetic corals), hardiest of all of them that I tried, fastest growing and reproducing in the tank.

But: requiring good filtration (or skimming), hand feeding twice a week (the whole tank feeding may work too, but not with my filtration), increased water changes, and dealing with all the babies/spawns, that after an year of initial excitement became a problem on their own.

Add expenses on the frozen food from the aquarium store (faster to prepare for feeding) or the chopped/blended seafood from grocery store (less expensive, but requires much more time for preparing and getting hands dirty). Expenses, escalating with the new colonies growth and expanding collection of other species of Tubastrea, that is likely to happen in the near future.
Your choice.

Help the others

If yes, here is what you can do to promote the knowledge of these species keeping:

  • If you find anything interesting (own experience or a link to personal experience), make it public knowledge. Post it here, or at own website and post the link here. Unfortunately, only forum is the site entry place. The unprotected submit form service became spammed in no time.
  • Try to work out how to improve filtration or skimming, with the goal to reduce water changes and have crystal clear water, with no algae growth, red cyano and no small particles in the water. How to make the skimmer work efficiently, for those of us, who still have problems.
  • Compare different sun corals: behavior, preferences, anything different about them from all the others. Again, make it public.
  • Most efficient mounting, fragging, removing from the main rocks.
  • Dealing with fading of coloration problem, solution that worked for someone.
  • Visual identification of the yellow-orange tubastreas, who is who, with links to original sources.
  • Diseases (if any) and treatments.
  • Aquascaping the sun coral dominating tank, to make it look good. Links to examples.
  • How to make sun coral spawn and larvae to settle and survive. How to and how not to.
  • How fast can the spawns grow with the good feeding.
  • How to deal with babies/spawns problem: preventing, removing from the main rocks, grow out options.
  • Cost efficient feeding of the large amounts of sun corals, and time efficient maintenance.
  • What button on the blender makes the appropriate pieces. So far I can get 1/8" (3mm) or cyclop sized food, nothing in between.

Next page: Feeding