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From: JB
I'm just looking for some advice here. Does the dry krill make good food for open brain corals? I want to find something easier to use than frozen food--it thaws out and falls apart, which makes it quite difficult to feed to my open brain. The krill, on the other hand, seems like it would be very easy to feed to the brain without making a mess. What do you think? Is it nutritious enough? Any experiences? Is there anything better?
From: HL
My green Open Brain is doing quite well on thawed frozen prawns (the human food kind, bought at the supermarket). It's also very easy to feed, and is convenient to store and/or remove from the freezer - just break off a suitable sized piece, let it thaw in a cup, etc. of tank water, and feed (including the shell, intestine and/or legs). The thawed prawn pieces hold together well, and does not make a mess - though I doubt if any of the other creatures would mind the mess, as it's just more food for them :)
If you want to feed it freeze dried food, then re-hydrate the food prior to feeding.
Watch out for very hard parts of the prawns / shrimps. I believe that a hard, bony spike may puncture the fleshy part of the coral, and thus damage it.
I feed my Brain twice per week, on average.
From: GL
What interests me here is that I have never been able to get my open brain to accept any food at all. When I feed the fish, it is usually frozen krill, frozen brine shrimp and live brine shrimp. Most times some of the food falls on the open brain, and is almost always picked off by a shrimp, even if it is ten minutes later. This open brain specimen was my first coral specimen and seems to be thriving on lighting alone, and I don't have metal halides.
OK, the question here is... is there a trick to feeding the open brain? Do I need to bother at all if it does not want to eat?
Every once in a while, I do use Corallife Target food, and the open brain might get a squirt if it is lucky.
The open brain coral actually feed at night. It extends it's tentacles after dark. Just feed it a piece of prawn, fish, etc about one hour after lights out. Place the food inside the ring of tentacles, and it should partially close up and ingest the food within a few minutes.
Open brains feed primarily (if not entirely) at night. After the lights go out in the tank and the room is really dark, the open brain will extend a bunch of tentacles. It's kind of neat to see it--it almost looks like it's turning itself inside out. Anyway, once those tentacles are extended, the
brain will accept all kinds of food. Mine has eaten thawed frozen foods, snails that have fallen off a rock and landed in it, loose pieces of Caulerpa algae, and even a recently shed peppermint shrimp shell.
I don't have metal halides either--just VHO's. I've had this coral for almost a year, and want to make sure I have it for plenty more years. Although it appears to be surviving on primarily just light, I haven't seen it grow a lot. So, I wonder if it needs some "meat and potatoes" to really
thrive. Since the animal is so well adapted to feeding, it would make sense that it could use a good mouthful every now and then--at least it won't hurt, to be sure. So, I'm going to try feeding it on a regular basis and see what happens.
From: GL
Yup, that's what I've heard before, but how? I have a similar situation with a cynarina. At night, both the open brain and the cynarina deflate and sit at the bottom looking glum. Sure they have a few tentacles, but on neither have them have I seen tentacles longer than +/- 4mm. We are talking about the same open brain here, Trachophyllia?
Two o'clock in the damned morning and I'm there with a torch, and these two corals are completely deflated. I mean, from the size of a smallish dinner plate during the day to the size of a teacup at night. I've seen pictures of cynarina with its tentacles extended and quite frankly that is why I had to have one.
Maybe there is a deeper reason here, my bubble coral (Plerogyra) had sweeper tentacles in the shop, and virtually every other one that I have seen has shown sweepers. At night though, not a single of my LPS have any sign of sweeper tentacles, nor any other tentacles longer than 4mm. Might there be a particular reason for this?
While on the subject of corals opening and growing, how fast should start polyps (Clavularia) propagate? I've heard around 1sqcm per month but I am getting 1sqcm per week. I am starting to think that I am having more luck than a beginner should be allowed.
Yes, I'm referring to Trachyphyllia. When first I bought mine, it did not extend many tentacles either. After a few feedings, this changed, though, and it now extends them almost every night.
If you look closely, you will see that it has an outer "mantle" which expands during the day, and an "inner core" which does not expand much. The tentacles are quite short, ~ 10mm in length, and maybe 3 mm in diameter. The tentacles emerge from the "joint" between the "mantle" and the "core". The "core contains one "mouth" per lobe. After dark, just place a small piece of prawn or fish meat on the "core". It should disappear within a few minutes.
After feeding, it should contract, and look "sickly" for a day or so. It will also emit a dark brown "smoke" during the next ~24 hours. This is quite normal, and is it's equivalent of going to the toilet.
My green brain coral has just squirted out a dark red juice (ink like), it has done this twice in the last half hour, once when my maroon clown was poking around near it (what a shock he got), it expels the juice from small holes around the top edge . I have not notice it doing this before, is it harmless to the rest of the inhabitants of the tank or should I be worrying. Is it expelling some kind of spores perhaps? Maybe someone could let me know if they have seen anything similar in their set up. I have also noticed very fine tentacles coming in and out from under the main body are these for feeding or do they sting?
From: JT
Last night I thought my red brain coral looked very big and "puffed up" – upon closer inspection I could see the claws of one of my blue legged hermit crab sticking out of the coral’s mouth. By the time I came back with the tweezers to rescue the crab he was gone completely. That was about 08.00pm last night. Today at about 04.00pm the coral spat out the shell minus the crab –just a load of brown crud round the shell, but the shell itself had lost its algae covering and was very white.
I assume the crab must have fallen off a rock above the coral and not been able to get out! Has anyone come across this sort of behaviour before? Am I not feeding my brain coral enough – at the moment he gets small bits of frozen krill, brine shrimp and bits of flake food?