Duncan Coral

[stanleo]

Ok, I bought a book on keeping corals and read it cover to cover. My next step was going to be picking my next species and researching it before I went and bought. That was the plan. Then today I had to go to the LFS and get a new powerhead and saw these little corals and impulse bought one.
 
I asked the questions. They said it was a duncan coral, scientific name is Duncanopsammia axifuga. The saltwater guy who I really trust to be knowledgeable said that they need medium light, medium flow and with my lights I should place it half way high in the tank, that they need the light to live but to grow well it needs meaty foods. He said they grow large.
 
He said to drip acclimate it for an hour. What I did was take a 2.5ml syringe and use it to add that much tank water every 5 to ten minutes for 3 hours. I checked the SG and the water in the bag matched the tank after the acclimation. I put it in the tank half way up. After an hour it start opening up and hopefully will be fully open tomorrow.
 
If anyone has any other advice I would like to hear it. i will post a pic tomorrow when the light comes on so you can check the species.
 
I do have a few more questions. How often should I feed it meaty foods? I was planning on using a syringe to squirt frozen shrimp onto the polyps after turning off the powerheads. Will that work? Should I use other foods?

 

[Donya]

Pretty much you can feed as often as you want up to daily as long as it's in small amounts and the polyps are extended and "poofy" looking. The polyps deflate and shrivel up when expelling waste and should be left alone then.
 
Meaty frozen foods are the norm with LPS. The polyps on Duncans aren't terribly sticky, so they can struggle to keep hold of floaty foods, even with the pumps switched off. Moving your hand about can create enough current sometimes to knock food away from polyps you just fed. Some people use the tops of soda bottles to minimize the current even further and create an isolated "feeding cone" of sorts, similar to what is done with sun corals.  After a while I switched to using really small, sinking carnivore pellets with my Duncan, which have been much easier to target feed.

 

[stanleo]

Good to know donya thanks. I have a pic of the little guy. He is completely open now which is a good sign, right?
 

 

[Donya]

Yep, that is the Duncan coral happy face.

 

[stanleo]

I target fed him with the syringe today. He ate two shrimps. It was fairly easy but its hard to get the shrimps stuck without touching the coral enough so that it won't close up on me. What kind of carnivore pellets do you use? That sounds like it would be a lot easier.

 

[Donya]

The coral may also need to get used to being fed. Reacting negatively to any sort of contact, food or otherwise, is a common annoyance with newly introduced LPS, so don't be discouraged if the same response happens at first with pellets too. The pellets I use are New Life Spectrum Small Fish Formula. I put a pinch of pellets in a small cup, add some tank water, stir a bit to get the pellets broken through the surface tension if they're stuck, and then use a pipette to hoover up a bunch. 

 

[xXLeafeonXx]

Why is it white it looks bleached.

 

[stanleo]

That's just the quality of the pic. it's a nice green color. And it is still doing well. I feed it almost every day and can't hardly wait for it to start getting new polyps.