Sweeper tentacles ??

Apollo

Apollo

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Hi guys,

I have obtained a Mycedium (Peacock/Green eye cup) coral over the weekend and sofar the coral has been doing very well.

I noticed however over the past two days that every night the coral seems to extend more sweeper tentacles than the night before.

What is the reason for this ? Does the coral feel threatened by the presence of other corals ?


I am not really concerned about this , just curious as to why the coral is behaving in this way.

I currently have Green mushrooms & Green button polyps in my tank. They are spaced well apart from one another ( at least 10cm or more)

Pics of Mycedium with sweeper tentacles extended :

P1020823.jpg


P1020825.jpg
 
They do this for two reasons:

To trap food at night and to wage war with another coral that it either feels threatened by or to kill other corals for space.
 
That is an awesome pic Apollo! Thanks for sharing - I have read that the chalice corals do indeed wage holy war and are very agressive - good thing theuy are slow growers!

As Tony said they are sweep feeders so the feeders are there to chow down - I did read that you can suppplement their diet by target feeding with brine shrimp when they are extended like that

Question - where do you have that coral? I read that they need indirect light under MH, I have T5 so I have it in the open at the top of the tank - what do you do as thats a very healthy specimen
 
mnd123 said:
That is an awesome pic Apollo! Thanks for sharing - I have read that the chalice corals do indeed wage holy war and are very agressive - good thing theuy are slow growers!

As Tony said they are sweep feeders so the feeders are there to chow down - I did read that you can suppplement their diet by target feeding with brine shrimp when they are extended like that

Question - where do you have that coral? I read that they need indirect light under MH, I have T5 so I have it in the open at the top of the tank - what do you do as thats a very healthy specimen
Click to expand...

Thanks mnd ,

The coral is placed fairly close to the top of the tank. I run a 60 liter Nano with 2 x 18W PL tubes. Due to the construction of the Nano I can't really look at MH or T5's. So I did some research as to the coral requirements , especially in a Nano.It was recommended to me that the Mycedium be placed high in the tank . The flow is moderately high, but the coral seems to love this as well as the light.

I'll try and get a good pic with the actinic/moonlight LED's . The colour variations are absolutely amazing.:thumbup:

I'm not doing anything special at present to care for the coral, except good water husbandry and general maintenance. After acclimitising for approx 3 hrs, the coral was carefully placed and sofar that's it.
The coral's been in the tank for approx 3 days. It already exhibited full polyp extension and sweeper tentacle extension on the first night in the tank.

Water parameter wise ( Ammonia = 0 , Nitrate = 2 , Nitrite =0 , KH =10 , pH = 8.4 , Calcium = 400 ). The tank is approx 10 weeks old.

I'll have a look at target feeding with brine shrimp or similar .

Here's a pic during daytime of the Mycedium:

P1020812.jpg
 
Shaun said:
It is normal to extend sweepers at night and it probably means it is just settling in and will keep on doing it. The theory behind it is that its food source comes out at night.
Click to expand...

Thanks Shaun,

Question : Do these sweeper tentacles potentially pose a threat to livestock such as small fish , shrimps etc ? I've noticed the tentacles extending up to 6 cm in some cases.
 
Apollo said:
Thanks Shaun,

Question : Do these sweeper tentacles potentially pose a threat to livestock such as small fish , shrimps etc ? I've noticed the tentacles extending up to 6 cm in some cases.
Click to expand...

Yip, they can take down snails too, the prey needs to be really small.
 
They can also sting and kill neighbouring corals unnecessarily
 
Tony said:
They can also sting and kill neighbouring corals unnecessarily
Click to expand...

Thanks Tony,

Well, I've placed the coral in such a way that it should not interfere with other corals in the tank. I'll try and keep a radius of 10cm free around the coral just to be safe.

Only problem unfortunately, is that I have some Clavularia (clove polyps) on an adjacent piece of LR. They came as hitchikers and I can't move them :(
 
I have mine next to pulsing xenia and they are fine.
 
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