sun coral (Tubastrea) spawning...?

jrpark22000

jrpark22000

Premium member
Any one else have sun coral (of any color) reproduce in their tank?

I have other threads including my build thread showing these guys reproducing in my tank. It's not unheard of but not all too common. My question, if anyone does have offspring, do you also pay attention to the feeding schedule of them?

I feed my black and yellow species every 3 days. Each colony get a cube of mysis. Roughly every 3 months, they stop eating for 2-4 feeding ccycles. They never seem worse for wear, but it makes me very nervous as it can be very hard to get them back on schedule to open up as they did before these feeding breaks. Over the last couple years, I'm noticing a trend. After these feeding breaks, 2-4 weeks later I see new polyps in my overflow, sump and in DT.

I'm wondering do they stop feeding before and during the reproducing phase?
 
The question comes to mind as currently the black colony isn't feeding. My yellow colony goes through the feeding breaks 2-3 times more often than the black colony. I also have far more yellow colonies in the overflow and sump.

All these observations could be coincidence. Hopefully someone else has some experience.
 
I've never been able to keep these for some reason but I really want the yellow ones because having something that opens at night in that color is awesome


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They can be picky due to light and/or flow. I find mine open up if I "prime" the tank with a small amount of food and leave the power heads on (this seems to be one coral that really DOES love big flow). Might not eat if it's not hungry. As long as they share a common canosarc, they can store energy as a group in terms of opening for feeding (though not for thriving).

Mike usually spawn new polyps in the middle of the colonies. If there isn't enough room, they "jump" and take root elsewhere.


--Aspiring reefer
 
PhysicsPhD said:
They can be picky due to light and/or flow. I find mine open up if I "prime" the tank with a small amount of food and leave the power heads on (this seems to be one coral that really DOES love big flow). Might not eat if it's not hungry. As long as they share a common canosarc, they can store energy as a group in terms of opening for feeding (though not for thriving).
Mike usually spawn new polyps in the middle of the colonies. If there isn't enough room, they "jump" and take root elsewhere.
--Aspiring reefer
Click to expand...

The colonies have been in the same flow and light for several years. It's not the colonies don't open to eat, or that I can't trigger them to open up to eat. Instead is noticing their cycling of not wanting to eat on a periodic basis and wondering why? I've seen enough cycles I'm wondering if it does have anything to do with their reproduction.

My colonies do still grow new heads on the mother mass, but they are also either ejecting polyps or spawning. The new offpsring start off as very very tiny specs so I'm tempted to think spawning, but it's a guess.
 
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