Feeding Corals

[fritz]

Just wanted to post some observations and get a dialog going on this topic. I think we all, my self included, get involved in feeding our corals the biggest thing possible for the "wow" factor when that is mostly likely not the best thing to do. Anyone who has owned a snake will tell you that 2 small mice will make it grow faster than feeding it one super large one.

I first noticed this with a colony of yellow polyps. I fed them mysis, spirulina enhanced brine shrimp, cyclopeeze and phyto. I noticed that while they would ingest the mysis and brine shrimp (which was cool) it didn't seem to do much for them. The cyclopeeze seemed better, it would only stay in them for a day or two and they grew better than they did from the brine shrimp or mysis. When I started dosing large amounts of phyto into the tank and stopped feeding brine and mysis altogether is when I saw my greatest results. They were growing and rapidly reproducing! This experiment was anecdotal, the increase in available phyto could have caused a sharp boom in my pod population which could have been feeding them, I don't know.

In any event this intrigued me and led me to an article for animals that like my snake reference applies here:

Suppose you have three foods to feed your coral. I'm going to make up foods and numbers for illustration purposes.

Food A contains 100 calories
Food B contains 80 calories
Fooc C contains 70 calories

Food A requires 60 calories to digest and expel any waste
Food B require 30 calories to digest and expel any waste
Food C requires 10 calories to digest and expel any waste

Again I'm not saying we should use "calories" to gauge coral food, I'm using a human analogy to illustrate a point.

Food A (100 calories - 60 calories to digest and process) = 40 net calories
Food B (80 calories - 30 calories to digest and process) = 50 net calories
Food C (70 calories - 10 calories to digest and process) = 60 net calories

SPS, with the exception of the montipora genus, seem to not rely on zoaplankton as much as we thought a few years ago. It now appears that bacteria are their food source along with building block materials such as amino acids as is evidenced by zeolite tanks. Even non zeolite tanks that employ "heavy stocking, heavy feeding and heavy skimming" are making use of the same principals as zeolite tanks only via nature and not a bottle. It appears that sps do not eat the "food" we've been giving but rather they eat what eats the food we've been giving them. Namely the excess bacteria thriving off this excess food.

Softies such as the yellow polyps, while certainly able to swallow large prey seem to grow and reproduce better on very small, highly nutritious and easy to digest meals. I wonder if other softies are similar to this species.

Which leads me to the reason of this post in the first place, LPS. If yellow polyps do so well with small food, how about acans, dendros, micros, candycanes? Would these do better on a diet of phyto, cyclopeese, or pellet? I've experimented by dosing aminos and sugars (The Fauna Marin product meant for sps tanks.) to see how the lps like it. I can attest to it's use in an sps tank as I was able to grow sps under 108 watts of T5. I don't think they would have had the energy necessary to grow with such little photosynthesis going on. It certainly does appear that they were able to get quite a bit of nutrition from the water column in that case.

Anyhow, what have you guys found? What caused your corals to grow faster than other foods?

 

[bad coffee]

Meat. arh arh arh.

When I was making my food, and feeding 2 or 3 times a week, my corals were out of control. Now I feed flake, cyclopeeze, and mysis just about every day. and my corals aren't nearly as nice.

B

 

[fritz]

Really, that's interesting. What kind of corals specifically and what were you using in the homemade food?

 

[JHOV2324]

I would say feeding Phyto is one of the best things to do...although it may raise your nitrates and blah blah blah, but at least everything gets to eat...fish, corals, verts, filter feeders, as to feeding the tank bigger foods most of that food goes to the fish and verts.. I also think it varies on which kinda coral, although all corals can grab food from the water column there are corals that we need to spot feed bigger foods...i think it depends on the the type of coral...most can probably thrive on phyto..but others need that extra meal.....but then again what do i know i'ma noob still :biggrin: To be honest and I could be full of it...I remember when I first started to use Phyto I noticed my corals where nicer oppose to not really feeding them and just feeding mysis which was quickly consumed by the fish and verts....my dos centavos

 

[fritz]

Looking at my dendros, those are some BIG mouths! These mouths don't look like they were meant to eat small things, but neither does a humpback whale's mouth.

Looking at it to scale and knowing what anemones will catch and eat (with the occasional tang as an exception) I have to think that small mysis or brine shrimp sized food would be right on target for them.

 

[bad coffee]

Really, that's interesting. What kind of corals specifically and what were you using in the homemade food?

Mostly LPS and some softies.

my food reicpe:
whatever is on sale at the fish counter.

Shrimp, squid, mussles, and a small piece of fish. tuna, salmon, whatever is cheap.

To it, I add selcon, a big dose of freeze dried phyto, and some flake. Blend it with enough ro water to make a decent consistancy. freeze. Sometimes I add a big chunk of cyclopeze.

B

 

[taat2d]

How often does everyone feed their corals? Doesn't the phyto possibly add phosphates?

 

[Deanos]

I've found that cycloseris sp./fungiids, acanthastrea and dendrophyllia (i.e. Duncans, dendros, sun polyps) respond better to larger food items. I can't pay attention to growth rates, since there are days I feed only cyclop-eeze and days I feed larger items. There's no way for me to tell what may be causing a "growth spike." On the rare occasions in the past that I'd dose live phytoplankton, the feeding response of these particular LPS was minimal.

 

[scumonkey]

I hatch brine shrimp 24/7 and, feed clouds of hours old nauplii to my tank
everyday. I think it's the reason I've seen tremendous growth and,
have been able to keep a crinoid alive going on 9 months now!

 

[tosiek]

Mostly LPS and some softies.

my food reicpe:
whatever is on sale at the fish counter.

Shrimp, squid, mussles, and a small piece of fish. tuna, salmon, whatever is cheap.

To it, I add selcon, a big dose of freeze dried phyto, and some flake. Blend it with enough ro water to make a decent consistancy. freeze. Sometimes I add a big chunk of cyclopeze.

B

The freezing process then thawing destroys alot of the good stuff in the food. While its still there its released as dead stuff into the water its frozen/thawed into. No way you could mass produce the speed at which it needs to be frozen at to not lose all the "Good stuff" in the food. This is the scientific explaination :scratchch :smash: Too much cell damage and protien damage done for the food to be as good as fresh food. Comes close though and easy.

I used to feed one colony of acans with non rinsed mysis/cyclo and had nice appearance and health. Fed like that for 2 months then switched to rinsing my mysis before adding it and noticed a decline in appearance of the coral. Still good but not as good and puffy as before or its reaction to food added into the tank.


As per phyto i used to dose my tank with phyto regularly then stopped and haven't noticed a difference in coral health or appearance back in my 24g. For the damage it does to nitrates and Po4 its not worth the trouble. Too little concrete data on phyto use and coral feeding with it. Although there is data about certain LPS having more bacteria with phyto use than without its still not proven that it would benefit coral appearance or health/growth. Too many other factors in it all as per other things like amino acids, nutrients in the water channel, etc.

 

[fritz]

I hate when people say "corals" in these discussions. As Dean pointed out even the term LPS would be too broad in this discussion as some appear to do better on larger food and ignore the smaller food.

A species specific example would be best I think for this kind of topic. In the way that "autopsies" have shown montipora to readily consume zoaplankton whereas acropora do not exhibit the same "zeal" for those animals. In that way you can't say that SPS eat or don't eat zoaplankton because it isn't true for all of them. Dosing phyto in an SPS system IMO is a bad idea. The ensuing nutrient spike isn't worth any benefit of dosing, unless you're trying to darken pastel acros. A softy tank however is another story entirely and possibly certain lps tanks would greatly benefit from it.

 

[Harif87]

Could the type of lighting be a factor in what kind of food (i.e. size, type) would better benefit the specimen? I mean is it possible that there is some sort of action potential where a certain amount of energy would have to be put in, in order to yeild greater quantities of energy that is stored in the food? If that would be the case then higher lit tanks would result in a better reaction by the coral specimen (whatever it may be) as contrasted with the same specimen in a lower lit tank............ Its just a thought.

 

[fritz]

Definitely, if I understood you right. I imagine that with LPS there are some things that light alone cannot provide. Even sps corals can't live on light alone. I guess it's like a plant without soil. It does need light but it also needs carbon sources among other things.

 

[fritz]

This morning I noticed that just about 80% of my candy canes heads are splitting. I got this from Cali 2 weeks ago and it's grown quite a bit so far. I don't feed at night when the tentacles come out, in fact I only feed about 4 hours before "lights out" and not very much when I do.

What gives? What are they eating? My tank is far from abundant with pods so I doubt that's it. I dosed aminos and sugars for a little while as an experiment but I haven't done that in a week. Are these animals more photosynthetic than I'm giving them credit for?

 

[Deanos]

Are these animals more photosynthetic than I'm giving them credit for?

Yes.