Food

Anyone who has a mixed reef.
What coral food do you use. If fish poop is your primary food for your corals say that.If its a commercial brand (reef snow ect ect) say that.

I just ran out of Reef Snow so I was going to get some info before I resupply.

Thanks!

 

Honesty I don't feed any of my coral. I do add MG, ALK, & CA though.. Whatever is in the water column, they have been feeding on.. Though I may start perhaps at the later date.

 

Different corals will be different. All corals can get energy from light, but no coral can get biomass, i.e. tissue from light. For that, they need amino acids and other nutrients. What you feed to an SPS will not be the same as what you feed to an LPS and what you feed to an LPS may not be what you feed to another LPS.

Corals require specific enzymes to break down specific foods. It takes a lot of energy to make an enzyme, so, often corals only produce enzymes for the types of foods most widely available to them in nature.

Most corals will eat bacteria, especially corals with small polyps. So, bacteria plankton is good. Carbon dosing can accomplish this, also, there's some reason to believe water changes probably does as well to some extent. Fish poo can also be good, both for corals and bacteria, so fish are good to have.

Not all corals will eat bacteria though, for examples gorgonians. These primarily eat zooplankton. Other corals, with both small and large will as well. Keeping an established copepod and larger amphiopod population will help feed these. Dosing silica for diatoms and dosing phytoplankton can help with this. You have to be careful with phytoplankton though, as it can pollute your water quickly if overdone. Most corals, possibly with the exception of some soft corals, won't eat phytoplankton though, so, by itself phytoplankton is not a coral food. Also, back to pods, you can culture them externally and many corals will eat rotifers, which are also easy to culture. Another is newly hatched artemia (brine-shrimp). Brine shrimp don't have much nutritional value, but they do have more right after they hatch. So, if you culture them, you can feed them daily. As it's a live food, it is less stressful on your filtration.

I tend to be wary off adding dead foods. Anything dead, will start decaying instantly and will tend to pollute your water. This is especially true of the bottled marine snow and dead zooplankton coral food mixes etc...
I do feed a heck of a lot of cycop-eez though. Both my Anthias and corals will eat this, so, there tends not to be waste. If you feed dead food, that's the key, there can't be any waste, to settle as detritus.

Also, for some of the larger mouthed corals you can spot feed mysis and krill. Excess of these are also consumed pretty quickly by fish, so, there tends to be less waste.

It's always best if the corals are ready to eat though. If their feeder tentacles aren't out when you feed, the food may be wasted by the time you do. A few drops of clam juice or something else nice and smelly, 15 minutes before feeding, can make feeding much more efficient.

 

Thank you!

 

Nothing, IMO lights, water changes, and dosing is enough for them.

 

Well, you should be very careful using liquid coral foods - most of it never gets to the corals and the rest just decomposes, raises nitrates, and promotes algae. If you have corals that are non-photosynthetic, it's best to target feed them, rather than put a lot of food in and hope that some gets to the corals.