I know some people will say I'm nuts, I I'm pretty convinced LPS corals can "smell" food in the water. I have some blastomussa that are very slow to react to food. Some might label them as picky eaters. I don't think so. I just think they are slow to smell the food. I've noticed that they are usually late for the party when it comes to eating. The candy canes, acans and chalice are all easy to feed. I just have to drop a few bits of food on some of the polyps with extended tentacles and in a few moments all the polyps have extended their tentacles. Ready to eat.
But with my blastos I kind of have to tease them a little. Many of us feed frozen foods. I feed frozen cubes a lot. I use a little 4oz plastic cup to melt the cubes. Quite often, I'll add a little tank water to help melt the cubes. It's easier to suck it up with a turkey baster if there's a little water in the cup. I'm assuming many reefers do this too. You ever notice the little teeny tiny pieces of food in the cup after you add the water and thaw it all out? It ends up looking like food dust suspended in the cup of water and larger chunks of food. I'm sure it's teeny tiny pieces of food. But it looks like a little cloud in my turkey baster. I squirt a little puff of that food dust onto my blastos to stimulate them into opening up to eat. As gently as I can, I'll squeeze a little cloud of those tiny pieces out of my turkey baster to cover the whole coral. The dust cloud will slowly settle over the blasto colony with the pumps turned off. It takes 5 minutes or so for those polyps to react and open up to fully swallow the real chunks of food thats going to be arriving. By blastos don't really extend tentacles, but they go from semi-closed to fully open and puffed up after they smell the food. It just takes them a bit more time to react.
Maybe your new lobo is like this? Are you turning the pumps off and giving it time to react to the feeding opportunity that you are presenting? Maybe it needs a little teasing and a little more time to react?
Just thought of this...
Maybe you need to try the old plastic bottle feeding trick? You know, cut the bottom off a 1 liter plastic coke or pepsi bottle. Take the plastic cap off and submerge the bottle over the top of the coral. Squirt food in the hole with your turkey baster and then screw the cap on. Give it 15 or 20 minutes and see what happens? If it doesn't eat, just take the cap off the bottle and pull it up slowly to avoid disturbing the uneaten food. Then use the turkey baster to suck the food back out.
Might take ya 45 minutes of screwing around just to see if you can coax it into eating ............ but who doesn't love being elbow deep in their tank?
