Sun coral: Is it worth the troubles?

See by yourself:

Feeding takes time

Take the food from the freezer, cut to proper sized pieces (or use more expensive frozen Ocean Plankton and Mysis, or a homemade blend of seafood, prepared ahead of time and frozen), let them thaw, discard the water, double wash them. Optional - soak in Selcon or another food enchancer.

This should be timed with starting of the sun coral opening. If it already closed after opening - will open very slowly and unwillingly.

Feed with flow off, trying to give all polyps some food, wait for re-opening, feed the second time (not necessary, if the feeding is done frequently). Let them ingest the food, clean what was left around uneaten.

Turn flow on. Clean the tools. Return all to their storage places. Mark log or calendar, that sun coral was fed today.

And so on, week after week, month after month, for years. Not everyone has such time. Some of us may want their life back.

I really would like to know details, how to feed sun coral in 30 seconds.

Not possible, if:

The filtration is incapable to process the influx of organics or if unused food was left to rot in the tank, without being picked up by cleanup crew.

Unless the coral has only several polyps and is fed by tweezers, 1 shrimp in a mouth, the efficient skimmer and efficient filter (brand and price independent) are highly desirable. Relying on water changes is very tiresome in a long run.

Gorgeous coral for the tank

Large and very bright coral, this splash of sunny color makes an impact, especially in low light tanks or low lit areas of the tank, where photosynthetic corals will not grow.

Take a look at this .pdf file (13 Mb, it is worth it): big tank, filled by sun and sps corals. This one too. At more modest scale, in my 90g tank:

Except the black sun and another sun coral relative at the left, and the yellow sun at the right, all suns are either the fragmented main colony, bought 2 yrs ago, CN$36, or its babies/spawns.

Beginner's work: it was acquired just after 3 months of setting the first saltwater tank. The pure yellow at the right, bottom, was badly starved to the tissue recession 5 months ago.

Hardy, easy care

The care is much easier, than for other, soft non-photosynthetic corals, that require few to several daily feedings and fine or even specialized food, available frequently through mail order only. For a sun coral twice a week feeding is sufficient, using raw grocery seafood.

Tolerant to a wide range of conditions, as long as it's fed. I mean nitrates (80 ppm), phosphates (1 ppm), alkalinity (6-15 dKH) and pH (7.8-8.6), but not the red cyano, flatworms or dinoflagellates.

Hard to kill, unless burned by other corals, mechanically damaged, exposed to toxins or very efficient pathogens.

Could be removed from water for a short time, even inflated, dropped from 1 ft /30 cm height in the tank, tasted by toothy fish, left occasionally for a month without food. Live long term with 40ppm nitrates and 0.5 ppm phosphates, at pH 7.8, in the saltwater, prepared using tap water (with conditioner), temperature drops in case of power failure - mine was 73F in the tank for hours.

Babies (from larvae) can be pried by fingernail, or its substitute, glued alive by superglue, pressed by finger after that - sharp edges come through the soft tissue. Some were lost in unfed tank for many months, still alive, but thin and not growing without feeding.

Quote: "Sun corals were found intact and still attached to their skeletons near the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests in the 1950's", link.

More corals in the same tank

The positive side, if the tank has proper filtration, many other non-photosynthetic or photosynthetic corals can be kept there: one more, one less - it changes nothing.

Overpopulation problem

The negative side, when it starts to reproduce, it's difficult to remove babies from the main rockwork, especially from hard, boulder type rock. Involves destruction of aquascaping and removing rock from the tank. Don't ask me, how do I know...

Another option is to leave them as is, improve filtration, increase spendings and labour, and let the unfortunates die on their own, overtaken by larger, earlier generations.

Would I buy it again, after all of that?

Yes. After the first year, I'm at peace with it.

Would I buy another species of the sun coral?

No, unless it will be better than what I already have.