Black Sun Coral

how much i well take a frag if not to far

 

Gered, you may know most of this but since you asked...
I had all three orange, yellow and black. They are a lot of work as they are non-photosynthetic. They get their nutrients only through target feeding. You have to target feed them or they don't do well. I sold mine at spring swap last year because of this.
If you get them, get a one liter bottle and cut the bottom off. Silicone a layer of half marbles or flat rocks around the new bottom edge. Then poke a hole in the cap for airline tubing. Sink the "hat" over the polyps and use a small syringe to feed them. It works well but you have to do it often, I would say daily.

 

Depends on what species of tubastrea it is. I kept the red-headed step child of the group, micrantha. It is the most difficult species. It is black and branching with bright green polyps. Touching the tissue leaves a brown 'powder' on the hands and it's possible to rub to the skeleton without much effort.

I never had much of an issue as I received mine in good health and it took readily to feeding. I will say that periods of neglect lead to it extending its feeder tentacles much less readily than the other variety I have kept, T. Faulkneri. When I first received my sun corals, I make a point to feed them about 5 times a week to condition their feeding response and then back it down to 2-3x a week. I had decent growth rate with this technique (even some babies!), they do not require feeding of every polyp as some people will tell you and my experience suggests they can get by with less frequent feedings. They are harder to kill than most people would think. I rarely feed my colony of Faulkneri anymore (once every 2 weeks or so -- a lot more difficult to do in a column aquarium) and while it isn't growing much at all anymore, I have yet to notice any tissue recession and it will still extend feeder tentacles without much coaxing. I don't recommend this technique though /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/smile.gif.

A note on feeding technique, I found that once I had conditioned the feeding response, the most painless method of feeding was to pour a sluice of some cyclopeeze into the tank to get the polyp extension started, come back 10 minutes later and baste them with mysis. No need for clunky containers this way. If the colony is small enough and not feeding well, I pull them out, stick them in tupperware, make a deluge of cyclopeeze and mysis and soak the tubastrea in it, making sure that the food is in contact with the tissue, and occasionally agitating over the course of 20-30 minutes. Anything uneaten goes down the drain. They don't seem to particularly mind the constant moving and after several days of this, even the pickiest of tubastrea will have a much better feeding response and you can switch to the method above.