Feeding Sun Coral

Food and Frequency of Feeding

Food:

The sun coral can be fed by any meaty food of saltwater origin - raw, with no food preservatives and additives, chopped to the size to fit the mouth.

Grocery shrimp, salmon, cod, pollock, haddock, mussels - anything else, what is available and what coral agrees to eat.

Or a food blend, based on Melev's Reef or Blundell's recipe. For starved corals, that not so long ago were in the ocean and not in another aquarist's tank, better not to use blends and use the whole mysis and brine shrimps instead. At least in my experience (the yellow sun had indigestion).

Faster, but more expensive way, is the feeding by the frozen food from the aquarium stores. They usually have a freezer near the cashier, with a varietiy of cubes and flats. Different kinds of Mysis shrimp, Marine Cuisine, Brine Shrimp (Artemia), Ocean Nutrition Special Formula VHP (very high protein), Ocean Plankton for a larger polyps (pink shrimp, larger than mysis. Also comes under names Pacific Plankton or just Plankton) and Krill, cut to the required size.

For example, I'm usually using the chopped grocery shrimp or salmon, or using the Plankton (San Fransisco Bay Sally's brand) or Pacific Plankton (Big Al's), Mysis shrimp (SFB Sally's, Big Al's, Hikari or Kordon brands, prefer the larger size, but all depends on the size of mouthes to feed), Marine Cuisine. The others kind were liked less by tank inhabitants: Prime Reef and Marine Diet, and both require additional chopping.

To reduce pollution of the tank, the frozen food could be thawed in the plastic strainer, with or without water, and the liquid be discarded. Additional rinsing and soaking in Selcon or Reef Plus is desirable.

About Cyclop Eeeze (dried kind) and similar sized food:
While cyclop eeze is very good for making sun corals open to feed, it was not sufficient to make them grow. For a 1.5 yrs I'm keeping the baby suns in a separate tank, that practically never receives the frozen meaty food, only dried crustaceans and some enriched fish food. But in large quantities.

The growth is very slow. Part of them was moved to the tank with a parental colony and started to be fed by mysis and fine particles, left from the big sun feeding. In half a year they became at least 6 times larger, than those in the cyclops fed tank.

On the bright side, the cyclop eeze fed suns have the pinkish coloration at the base of polyps (coenosarc, the common tissue of the colony), absent in the frozen food fed next generation babies and the main colony. The color faded after a few months on the frozen food diet with some cyclop-eeze addition.

Amount of food and frequency of feeding:

As much as polyp can eat without regurgitating food later, twice a week. Or more frequently, even every day if necessary. The goal is to keep coral looking well fed and not skinny:

Example: I had used two cubes twice weekly, when the colony was small. 4 cubes plus a piece of the seafood mix - when the colony grown:

8+ cubes for all: big orange tubastrea colony and all its 1.5 year old and less babies, recovering: lemon yellow colony, black T. diaphana, and some kind of miniature Dendrophyllia. It's not too much for so many polyps, so trying to feed once in two days. Luckily, the new corals are taking a little food at one time.

Frequency of feeding and growth:

With more frequent feeding the budding of a new polyps became more intensive. Here is after once a day to once in two days feeding (recovery of new starved colonies requires this, and feeding larger quantities twice a week caused spitting the food back):
Comparing to the usual growth on twice a week feeding: