"Targeted" Coral Feeding?

[dismayed]

So up until this point in time I've been feeding my coral live phytoplankton by dropping it in a high flow area of my tank. I've been reading more and more about people who do "targeted" feedings, where they directly feed a specific coral.

I've read about several 'home grown' methods for doing this, but all seem somewhat clunky. I was wondering how some of you might be doing this?

I was thinking about buying an eyedropper, filling it with DT's phytoplankton, putting my hand down in the water next to the coral, and then releasing the eye dropper. Will that work?

Thanks.

[Frick-n-Frags]

sure. I use an old salifert 5ml syring and plastic tube for my injector.

also, what corals are you trying to feed phytoplankton to?
as a rule: If the coral houses its own algae (photosynthetic corals) they don't have a lot of use for veggies. they need the proteins and aminos from meat to build mass.

so, it could very well be that regardless of the feeding technique, you aren't doing the corals much good anyway.

[dismayed]

Right now I have: red mushrooms, green mushrooms, chili coral, cabbage coral, frogspawn, and fiji yellow leather in my 24 gallon aquarium.

I'm putting a capfull DT's Premium Reef Blend in the tank every few days. It contains "live phytoplankton. nannochloropsis oculata, phaedactylum tricornutum, and chlorella."

In addition to that I thaw out some frozen brine shrimp and add it to the tank for my fish.

Also putting Reef Complete and Reef Plus in the tank for calcium, vitamins and minerals.

Is all of this enough, or is there more I should be doing? When you said meat can you give me an example? Thanks.

[Reefmack]

Sorry to jump in to the post, but if protein is needed could something like brine shrimp flakes be crushed into fine particles, mixed with tank water and target fed? I'm thinking of a green open brain I have.

[dismayed]

Also I just wanted to note that my tank has quite a few decapods swimming around in it. I'm guessing that some of my coral can eat these guys?

[Frick-n-Frags]

Originally posted by tlmack
Sorry to jump in to the post, but if protein is needed could something like brine shrimp flakes be crushed into fine particles, mixed with tank water and target fed? I'm thinking of a green open brain I have.

first, I think the bigger variety of stuff you can put into them, the better the odds of you meeting their dietary needs. so I personally try everything I can get my hands on (I'm getting me some oyster eggs next, those sound delicious )

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OK, back to the feeding.

your chili coral is not photosynthetic. it gets all of its nutrition from the water, what it can catch, what it can absorb. those guys absolutely have to have meat in their diet. anything non-photosynthetic (I'm sure there's an exception out there) eats meat, just roll with that

heh, ok I call plant life (algae, PHYTOplankton, broccoli) veggies because i want to think in terms of nutrition.
I call ZOOplankton, cyclopeeze, brine, fish flakes, golden pearls, frozen squid/krill, oyster eggs etc meat, as in protein and amino acids

regarding phyto(veggies) for non-photos, it doesn't trash the tank(much), but considering we don't know what some eat, it may be a good thing to try. some are known. sun corals don't need it, they eat meat

those mushrooms you have don't need to be fed anything.
feed the froggy etc meat, they love meat

also, corals work on cycles. they like a regular day, so you can train them to eat at the same time every day. mother nature generally brings in the ZOOplankton(meat ) from the open ocean around dark, and if you notice, most corals come out to hunt more at night (like your chili) I feed my gang at 9pm, 1 hr before the actinics go out, but well after all the white lights are off

I feed them once a week, but I stir up some kind of dust in the evening to throw them some kind of bone (bacteria lives on dust, bacteria=meat, my corals open up on cleaning day when I'm turkey basting because of this)


my most fun in this hobby is knowing from the coral's perspective, how they live: what they eat, who they fight with, light, flow, who's touchy, who's tough. lots of experimenting involved too.
try stuff, tell us what happened.

i just skinned some corals with too much flow. OK now I learned, next... but feed the chili meat, the rest get help from their internal algae, and hunt down all that personal info on each one of your little pals here and you will know what and how to feed (lots of different sized mouths and strengths of grabbiness out there)

sorry for the book

[Faviaphile]

I thought that I would add that when you feed I find it really helpful to turn off all powerheads- etc. If you don't the coral won't have the maximum amount of time to eat- as the food will be sucked into the overflow.

[Frick-n-Frags]

another trick is to kill the return pump (I just slide my return over into the overflow box, but same effect: no new water is flushing out the water with the food in it) and let the water column food blow around to feed the corals in the powerhead flow

when I feed the corals via water column (me = too lazy to target feed), I soak the food in fresh water so it floats around better

I learned real fast, not to soak the food in freshwater to target feed, it all floats up , so saltwater for target feed.

I kill all flow for target feeding for a good half hour to let them choke down some of the retardedly oversize stuff they grab and no way could hang onto with any flow. all I have to say is that target fed corals look amazing the next day. they must really get a lot to eat in that one shot because I just bury them in food
my corky finger gorgonians will eat nonstop until the whole cup of food is gone.


about that green brain, try some like brine shrimp or krill sized stuff. they all can filterfeed, but I'm guessing brains can grab some big stuff too.

[dismayed]

Thanks for the great replies. I was reading somewhere that some folks will feed their tank phyto once a week, and zoo or meats later in the week. Does that sound reasonable, or is that too infrequent?

Thanks.

[Frick-n-Frags]

this is the part of the game where you figure out for your unique system. the whole game is this:

put as much food as possible without trashing your system.
the trick is to find the threshold where the algae BS just doesn't quite get started. my feeling is to start on the lean side and if algae starts showing up , back off.

I'm actually in the middle of this too. I have an older BB system which is quite nutrient poor, low load(1 fish, few corals, basically started over at xmas),
so I can kick out a bloom of brown snot in a couple of days if an overfeeding spikes the system, and it only takes one shot of too much to get it rolling. then I have to skip a week or two to make sure the snails are on top of it and try again

lather, rinse, repeat.......


that's why I have been playing around with target feeding as a way to put more food into the corals and less into the rockwork.

I would like to be able to feed them minimum of twice a week.


BTW, you don't really have to feed the yellow fiji Sarco or the cabbage Sinularia.
However, I do need to take pictures of my electric green Sinularia eating ground up flake food. no idea if it actually digests it(I would guess so). these are the grey area corals where feeding phyto may help, or not, we just don't know, so some choose to hedge their bets on feeding the phyto just in case. like with that chili coral too

OK, so I dose "ghetto phyto" once every 2 weeks when I razorblade the glass