show me your sun coral

[Qckwzrd]

it was all good a few months ago...some old pics

[dendro982]

Yummy! Any information about what Tubastrea species they are, any difference in care?

xroads: did you try container feeding?

[ReneX]

Qckwzrd,

I love your white tubastrea. When you got it, how did you know it had white polyps? All the ones I've ever seen in aquarium stores have been closed, and many of the online vendor photos of corals show suns with closed polyps as well. Did you just take a chance and get lucky? What's the color of it when the polyps are closed?

[Qckwzrd]

Well it started about 4-5 months ago when my tank had crashed. I lost all three of the suncorals pictured above (I gave what was left to a friend) and moved my orange frag I had to my tank at work. All the polyps died but there was skin left on the side. After about 2-3 monthsi started to see small white polyps that started to bud. I fed them cyclops for a month and moved them to my home tank. Since then they have grown a lot and I have about 15-20 polyps. They are white with red mouths and I do have one baby orange suncoral polyp next to the whites. Its the only one suncorals I've ever seen. So that's my pride and joy coral.

[dendro982]

There are also cupcorals, pure white and with orange body - mine were much smaller (~8x), than tubastreas.
Link to another thread

And on this website , non-photosynthetic big tank (very nice), in gallery are Mediterranean Astroides calycularis. Link to ID.

Quite interesting are all tubastreas and the similar corals.

[ReneX]

That's very interesting. So the white polyps grew back from a coral you had that was previously orange? There were no white polyps before the crash and the meltdown?

While we're sharing photos, here's another photo of a white tubastrea in the wild.

http://www.divegallery.com/tubastrea_2.htm

[Kreeger1]

That German tank is amazing dendro. How did you find that? I wish I could find a translation to the site as it looks like a lot of useful information
Erik

[Kreeger1]

little more looking at the german tank site, it seems to be a cold water tank. Beautiful none the less

[Kreeger1]

I stand corrected on the not a cold water tank

[dendro982]

How I found it: while non-photosynthetic corals web search leads mainly to general information and don't do it, the search for Menella and skimmer - gave that (through the illustrated croatian forum, which I don't understand). And Scleronephthya plus skimmer search - non-photosynthetic forum at Ultimate Reef (uk). You never know

The Karl's tank is interesting for me by aquascaping, possibility to have a lot of LR, even with high levels of feeding (my rock accumulated nitrates and phosphates with time, so I moved it after mechanical filtration). Also - classification of tube anemones and their keeping. I have one, and hoping to have more, if they will be compatible.

Translation: Google has Language tools (at the right from the search box), pasting url do not working for the frames, so I copied pieces of text for translation box.

Was particularly impressed by automatic translation from Japanese - the best looking tank with Dendronephthya, you know it: Japanese site and link to it from RC.

[Emc2]

Wow. some of those sun corals are just beautiful.

Here's mine. It looked pretty bad when I picked it up but it has done well with a little extra attention.

[aninjaatemyshoe]

Dendro, I have my doubts about the Japanese tank you linked. I do not think that it actually maintains the dendronepthyas, just held them for the sake of a pretty picture. If whoever setup this tank actually managed to care for them in such a setup, they need to reveal how they did it. I find it difficult to believe that they are thriving in a mixed reef when very few people are able to maintain them in dedicated tanks.

[dendro982]

Anything could be, of course... I linked the source of this information.
I'm not big fan of sps, but here is link to mixed sps and azoa corals tank.

[Mental1]

So what's this guy? Got a bunch of them as hitchhikers on my Caribbean rock...
Sorry about the picture ...

[Kreeger1]

aptasia a pest, use joes juice to kill it

[ReneX]

That looks like Phyllangia americana or one of the other many Caribbean species known as "cup coral". Non-photosynthetic, needs small meaty foods to live. I have some of those on my LR as well in my sun coral tank and I use them to catch whatever the sun corals miss. The skeletons on mine are a little smaller than a dime, and the polyps when open can be about 1 1/2" wide. Pretty, aren't they? Like very long-tentacled transparent sun corals.

Edit: Or, well, it could be Aiptasia If it doesn't have an obvious hard skeleton when closed. But I think I can make one out in the picture.

[Kreeger1]

[Mental1]

It's not aiptasia. I used to have an aiptasia garden and I know what that looks like -- I ended up throwing all of that rock out. I have never target fed them and they seem to be surviving just fine! I have about ten in my tank and they have been there for 18 months! They are very beautiful looking. I love how their tentacles are so transparent. Thank you ReneX -- took me a while but I found someone who took a decent picture. It's the Hidden Cup Coral. It must be getting something! I will start getting food to them! I love em...

[JokerGirl]

Here's mine - it's slowly recovering from a massive algae problem I had that killed half the colony.

[aninjaatemyshoe]

JokerGirl, was your algae a wispy hair-like algae? If so, I've had the same problem. A good way to deal with it is to blast the algae off it with a turkey baster.

[JokerGirl]

Nope, not the same problem. What I had was some form of hair algae. It had really strong holdfasts - could pick up my live rock by it. It was covering almost every rock in my tank along with my sun coral.

[Qckwzrd]

Nice looking tubastrea JokerGirl. I had the same hair algae problem with my whites. I couldnt get it off with a powerhead. I used a toothbrush and kept my lights off for a few days.

[JokerGirl]

A toothbrush didn't even work on this stuff. I tried that when the tank got transferred over in March. The only thing that has worked is a Phosban reactor and lots of peeling. When the stuff starts to die, it would get this "melting" look to it, at that point I could just go in and it would peel off the rocks in huge strips leaving clean rock behind.

You can see it up close in this picture... it otherwise just looked like little fluffy mats all over the tank.