Check this out. It's a Monomyces. Like a rhizo, smaller, but just as cool. (And just as expensive)

My Dendro

Fantastic pics!

Thanks! Pic was taken with iPhone 4s

heres mine!!

I miss my sun coral.

Those are nice pictures Asureef, what happened to it? I am guessing you sold it, they don't usually die right?...

My Dendro and green "Walking Dendro" are still going strong, look very happy, although they haven't grown much or more heads yet, I guess I will just up my feeding schedule, they certainly look hungry all the time...

Does anyone know if there are types of Dendro that maybe never grow additional heads? Mine is on post #229 on page 12 in case you can tell, although the body has about doubled since this picture, so maybe it just needs that extra reinforcement first...

Thanks, I gave it away when I sold my 28g. I have a colony of Dendro which I feed maybe once every week. It's a slow grower, started with 4 heads maybe doubled or more in numbers for the last 2yrs. I feed it krill and PE mysis.

Man I really love this thread . I was wondering if anyone has like species names corresponding pictures for several of the suns/dendros in the hobby. I'm fascinated by these corals but I can't seem to find a database anywhere that simply lists the corals in this family and shows representative pictures of them for reference.

SO in response to my own question, I found this resource on Ultimate Reef:
http://www.ultimatereef.net/info/iddb/dendrophylliidae.php

It gives a listing of a few of the members in the dendrophylliidae family. Anyone got any other resources?

How are you guys feeding your sun corals? I had a head of around 7 now it is down to 5..I try to spot feed it with my tweezers but once the mysis shrimp touches it the sun coral shoots in and closes up most of the time.. Not as if it is trying to grab the food and eat, but as if it was threatened and retreating. I tried turkey basting over them with mysis, doesnt work real well either..I don't want these to die out on me all. Like today I fed rods food to the tank and they are opened up, tried to feed them but they retreated..
Robert

When I bought my suns from the LFS I started feeding by putting a clear cup into the aquarium and putting the sun frags into the cup (this was done carefully to not disturb them or expose them to air. Then I would remove as much of the water as possible from the cup with the turkey baster and then add the thawed mysis; done this way to minimize the volume and maximize the concentration of the mysis. I would then gently blow the mysis around with the baster until a nice amount of shrimp would fall directly onto the polyps. I would leave them in the cup for about an hour to give them enough time to sense the food and eat it. after they ate (they look swollen), I would remove them from the cup and put them back in their spots (again carefully, without exposing them to air).

I also started adding into my feeding cup Kent Marine ZooPlex, and I think this might be better for you if the polyps are starved and can't open as much, since the food particles are smaller than the mysis. I would recommend using both just in case.

I think the cup feeding is necessary at first for most people because the polyps are usually starved a good deal when you get them from the LFS (i don't think most places take the time to target feed the sun corals daily). After about 2 weeks of feeding in the cup at around the same time my suns have gotten much fatter then when I bought them at the LFS, and they now open up all by themselves at "dinnertime". I now feed them by just turning off the filter/water flow and gently basting the mysis above the polyps so that they float down onto the polyps.

How often are you feeding? Once daily? Is it at the same time?

To those of you who run slimmer less/ filter less, how often do you feed?

As a hitchhiker, I received NFS hidden cup corals an had no idea they were Non photosynthetic up until this past month. Never spot feeding, and only having the ordinary specks floating around the water column, I had growth and new buds forming around the tank.

My question is, how much feeding do you think is necessary for dendros to thrive? I've read anywhere from twice daily to once a week, and would like to hear your opinions. Do you think running filter less takes a big burden off of feedings?

For what it's worth, Tubastrea and Dendrophyllia are completely unharmed by exposure to air. I pull frags out all the time.

Newest photo of my tank.

Hold on while I get my sunglasses!!

Absolutely stunning!

My tank with my sun corals has no filter/skimmer/sump or anything and I feed my suns everyday, sometimes 2-3 times a day. I have about 75 polyps total.

wow dedication with that tank...I have mine on a rock along with other corals so it gets hard to target them..they seem to never catch anything floating in the water when it passes by.
robert

They definitely aren't very sticky. Mine don't really catch floating stuff either. I target feed live copepods sometimes and I'd say a good 75% of them get away. I assume they do catch some stuff on their own though.

A few people asked, so the feeding regimen on the tank I posted above is a daily drip (added ~100 times) of baby brine shrimp, cyclop-eeze, and phytoplankton from an automated feeder. I add the phytoplankton to the feeder just to keep the baby brine "topped up". I also add live rotifers but only recently, and I doubt the Tubastrea catches them anyway.

New babies of T. coccinea pop up on the plumbing, overflow, on the sand, etc and grow quickly to become 10-12 polyp walnut sized colonies within a year. I have 3 huge colonies of T. micrantha but have never witnessed them spawning nor seen any recruits. I have seen Denrdophyllia spitting out babies but never seen recruits

i thought i'd share some crappy pics of my nps eating

Here's my sun coral.

Look at the tentacles on that thing! Reminds me of a willow tree. Very nice!

Finally after about 7 months my Firecracker Coral (Dendrophylia) is sprouting 4 or 5 tiny heads along the bottom, awesome! I probably could have target fed him a little more often, I usually target feed about 2 or 3 times a week...

My Sun Coral is acting funny. After going months of perfect eatting on demand it started not having tentacle extension. This has been happening for the last three weeks. I normally add Cyclopeeze to the tank wait five or ten minutes for full tentacle extension then target feed mysis or plankton. Now it opens but no tentacle extension resulting in no food consumption. This all started when new buds/heads appeared is there a connection?

This happens to me when I get new colonies. They inflate but no tentacles stick out. I have to turn off all flow and just set food on them and they eat. Idk why a colony would just start doing that out of the blue though. Maybe something is picking at its tentacles?

Interesting. I'll keep a look out for fish picking at it. I'll have to just sit the food on top.

Took about a week of coaxing just to get it to come out at night. Now it comes out during the day when I feed. Three heads in front. One tiny one popping out the back.

My suns. I keep them in a 5.5g pico

Black suns



Orange suns





And I'll sneak in a shot of my balano. Hey, similar to a dendro!



Still getting the hang of feeding these gluttonous monsters, but I'm getting new polyps especially from the black suns, balano, and the first orange sun. The first sun is sooo finicky still, but I was making mistakes with that one. It's so much better than it used to be.

L

Finally got my buddys old rhizo nursed back to health, it looked like hell for almost a year, it's smaller, but fine now

got way too many balanos, this is one colony, hard to get rid of them up here

My newer dendro is producing babies, it was supposed to be a colony but was starved into only polyp left by the time I got it, seems like every nps stony I get they are half dead, got a black sun coral but hasn't opened for me yet, I hope it makes it, still need some orange or yellow suns.

My what seems like rare from the photos on this post full colony of dendrophylia. I feed one cube of PE mysis each day it also snatches any pods it can catch. I have built a ledge in my aquarium and placed it underneath. since it doesn't get any direct light the polyps extend fully . 29 biocube fish 2 mystery wrasse 1 blue dot jawfish temperature 73 degrees .