Cycloseris Plate Coral Feeding on Video

Even though our corals derive most of their nutrition from light energy, it’s still important to drop them the occasional piece of solid food. This especially holds true for LPS corals like the Cycloseris in the sped up video above. These corals rely more heavily on large foot items, and even though it’s a slow process, watching them eat can actually be quite interesting and entertaining. We spot fed this orange plate coral a large piece of krill, and eventually the coral moved the food all the way from its rim to its centrally located mouth. The mouth opened right up and the Cycloseris started to consume the shrimp. The process took far too long, taking well over an hour, and smell of food in the water started to attract the hermit crabs and peppermint shrimp. Eventually the food was stolen from the coral, but this didn’t happen until after the lights went out. I didn’t even notice the theft until I saw a small group of hermits dog piling on the leftovers.