Dendrophyllia Training in well lit tank

[eraserhead187]

Has anybody ever trained their Sun Coral polyps to come out during the day to feed? I've read about it, and have been trying to do it. Only been at it for about a week, and have shows some limited progress so far. The only problem is that I don't have very many overhangs that I can stick himi under that allow me to get food to him easily.

What I've been doing, is I cut the bottom off a bottle of water, and squirt some cyclop-eeze down into it. Then every few minutes I'll use my coral feeder to circulate the water in the bottle, so that when his polyps are out a little, hopefully he is catching some of it. However, the bottle is not super easily accessible because of where the overhang it, and it pops off the bottom sometimes and loses the food. Will light actually HARM the coral? Or is it just that they don't need it? I want him to associate light with feeding time, so I don't want to have him in the dark. Eventually, when he is (hopefully) trained, I would like to hang him upside down from the overhang, as it gets good flow there. Any thoughts?

EDIT: Probably should mention params, lighting, etc.
BioCube 32g, with Steve's LED upgrade set to 50% whites 50% actinic
IceCap gyre 1k set to variable Max 30%
NH3, NO2 0.0
NO3 25
ALK 9.0
PH 8.2
CA 450
MG 1350
SG 1.025

Thanks!

 

[saltyhog]

Sounds like a solid plan. When I did it before I started out feeding him just after lights out and moved it 15 minutes earlier each day. Seemed to work pretty well and eventually got pretty reliable polyp extension.

I don't believe light bothers them at all. While diving in Hawaii we some in shallow water and bright light that were thriving.

 

[eraserhead187]

Thanks for the info! I did move him to an overhang, if that doesn't change anything then I'll pop him off again.

Thanks!

 

[eraserhead187]

So here is where I have the guy right now. Any suggestions on how I can reliably get food to him without it just blowing away and getting gobbled up by the other inhabitants? When he was on the ground, I could just put the bottle over him. Or should I just be conservative with the amount of cyclop-eeze I send at him with each squirt, and do lots of squirts? Thanks!