new acan and dendro

acanman · Apr 26, 2009

thanks matt at fish and frags.... i love my new additions........ heres the pic of my new acan but its not open all the way my gobie and shrimp was messing with it..

heres my dendros open up during the day..and ive had them for less than a week.....

MarineManiac · Apr 26, 2009

love dendros!

acanman · Apr 26, 2009

me too...

ahayes13 · Apr 26, 2009

nice additions !

Fish n' Frags · Apr 26, 2009

Hey Adam, those look great! The dendros look great! Did you try something different to get them to open?

acanman · Apr 26, 2009

just did what you said kept feeding and bam they opened up when i was feeding my fish so i gave them a bite to eat and they stayed open the rest of the day...... thanks matt

acanman · Apr 27, 2009

how often does everyone feed there dendros?

acanman · Apr 27, 2009

i been feeding them everyday with mysis and brine and it seems like an hour later there hungry again......they been staying open all day and i love it...

kass03 · Apr 28, 2009

I dunno what wicked demon is talking about.
Ive had a dendro for a year now and it always opens during the day. Once in a while my fish bump it and it closes a bit but opens back up. I have it on the bottom of my 55 gal. with 6 HO 54 watt T5's.
There are different kinds of dendros and not all of them open during the day though.

I feed mine mainly baby mysis and sometimes Rods food.
Mine went from 4 polyps to over 20 in a year and I just fragged it (they're all sold so don't pm).
I was feeding it once a week sometimes twice but since I fragged it 3 weeks ago been feeding every other day. It already had new babies so gonna keep feeding more often.

kass

FreelanceJedi · Apr 28, 2009

prolly confusing dendros with sun coral

stunreefer · Apr 28, 2009

Both Dendrophyllia sp. and Tubastrea sp. are from the same family, Dendrophylliidae. They exhibit very similar behaviors, including feeding and staying open during the day once "trained."

Corals from this family are nocturnal feeders in nature, as wicked demon pointed out, due to the fact that the water in nature becomes rich with plankton and food for the coral at night. During the day, there is little to nothing for them to eat, so they'll generally retract thier polyps.

In captivity we can provide food sources whenever we want to... if you only feed Dendrophylliidae during the day, they'll eventually "learn" to stay open during the day, yet instinctually (if you can even call it that) they are nocturnal feeders so it can take some time, coaxing and effort to keep these guys open all day long.

One of the biggest misconceptions I read/hear consistantly these days is that Dendrohyllia sp. stay open during the day and Tubastrea sp. (Sun Coral) do not... this is simply not true. Many times Tubastrea specimens are in very rough shape when they come in, they're brought in in huge quantities, they'll sit at a LFS longer than Dendrophyllia sp. will, thus leading them to be in worse shape by the time we get our hands on them. At this point they require lots and lots of food, and generally need to be "container fed" (see more on this here: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1528186&perpage=&pagenumber=2)

revhtree · Apr 28, 2009

Very Nice!

acanman · Apr 28, 2009

thanks everyone... and i agree on the sun corals.. i have seen many that will stay open during the day once trained.. same with dendros. except with mine they didnt have to be trained to hard.. i just blew some mysis and brine shrimp there way and they would open and when they opened i would feed them to get them use to opening during the day.. now there already staying open most of the day..

kass03 · Apr 28, 2009

What I meant when I said I did'nt know what wicked is talking about is I thought wicked said they will resume nocturnal behavior and reject food which is'nt true IMO. At least thats how I understood it.
Mine have stayed open most of the time since I got them from an online store and I don't even feed them until later at night.
I had a different kind of dendro before that one that did'nt want to stay open during the day even though I fed it during the day.
I was told there are different types of dendros and some are harder to get to stay open.
I do agree with what stunreefer said though. I just did'nt agree that they will go back to being nocturnal (unless you only fed them in the dark) cuz mine havent in the year Ive had them.

Very nice looking dendros and acan acanman.

kass