Скачать или смотреть Dendronephthya at night - timelapse

This video shows the nocturnal feeding behaviour of Dendronephthya corals (Carnation Corals). A camera with night vision capability (Sony HDR-CX505) was used, together with a low power aquarium LED light.

Field observations indicate these corals mostly expand at night, and for a limited time during the day when water currents are strong.

In the aquarium, these corals display similar behaviour. This time-lapse video has been accelerated 100-fold, and condenses almost 12 hours of footage in about 7 minutes. After a careful analysis of the video, based on the three healthy colonies in the front, the following averages are obtained:

total time inflated (hours:minutes:seconds): 08:34:27 (72.5% of total night time)
total time deflated (hours:minutes:seconds): 00:09:27 (1.3% of total night time)
inflation time (hours:minutes:seconds): 02:35:33 (21.9% of total night time)
deflation time (hours:minutes:seconds):00:30:33 (4.3% of total night time)

In conclusion, these (still preliminary) data indicate that Dendronephthya corals are expanded for a large part of the night, just like in the field. This suggests it is important to feed these corals at night. In addition, it takes these corals much more time to inflate than to deflate. Finally, although the timing of inflation/deflation is different for each individual, the total time spent in a given state is similar between the three colonies.

Stay tuned for more data!