Feeding coral

[Palting]

I know that there are many variables involved in finding the right coral feeding regimen. Things like age of the tank, size and age of the refugium, native pod population, skimming capacity, fish feeding, number and type of corals, water params, to name a few.

I was just wondering what the others are doing. Specifically, how often do you feed your coral? What do you feed? How do you feed, target or broadcast?

Thanks!!!

[uhuru]

You should check out the latest issue of CORAL magazine. Some great articles on coral feeding.

I keep non-photosynthetic corals, so I feed almost continuously by the broadcast method. All types of zooplankton, powder, liquid and frozen.

[fullmonti]

You might want to narrow your question some. sps, lps, softies & nps all have at least some different needs, some greatly different. What type coral are you thinking of keeping?

[Palting]

Thanks for the replies. I have a mixed tank of sps, lps, softies. There is one sps, a stylo, that seems to be doing so-so, and is the one that prompted me to ask the question. I have frozen mysis, bottled zooplankton, a frozen product simply called Coral Food, and Cyclp-eze. I also have a 20 gal refugium I've seeded twice with pods, along with my DT. I've read a lot on the subject, and I guess I am now more interested in what people are actually doing rather than the theories.

[jacksonpt]

I've got a mixed reef, though it's mostly LPS. I target feed brine and mysis a couple of times a week (more often when schedule permits, especially to the smaller colonies that I want to grow out faster).

I've used Kent Phytoplex and Kent Microvert before, but the stuff makes my skimmer go nuts, so I use it sparingly (maybe once a month, I turn my skimmer off for 12-24 hours).

[deezmarine]

i just feed rods food, i use to feed like 20 different things to my tank so that everyone got something to eat, not anymore just one thing feeds all

[fullmonti]

There are as many different ways of doing this & opinions as there are people doing it. LPS are pretty easy, they can eat the larger foods like the cyclop-eeze, mysis & coral foods, best to spot feed at night. It's my understanding SPS get most of their nutrition from photosynthesis (exactly what % is up for debate) & smaller foods, fish poo, bacteria etc. Some say they don't feed them at all, just feed fish well & have good light, then there is the other end, things like the zeo system (I use Pohl's extra & sponge power) that strip the tank bare & put back exactly what you want. But if you just have a few or one SPS I would go with the feed fish well & have a good light. Mostly if you have a heathy well balanced tank with steady good water quality you will not have have to feed a lot to have happy corals. Every thing of mine seems to like Reef Nutrition oyster feast.

Just one more opinion.

[Alysiak00]

i have a chum that i made consisting of mysis, squid, silversides, and some other stuff all minced up and frozen into bags. i just use a spoon and clip off a chunk and thaw it in a dixie cup. i turn the canister off, and lower the level in the skimmer and dump it in

[Palting]

Thanks again for the replies, all. I was kinda going nuts/confused with all the theories, so it's nice to actually see what is practiced in the real world.

[jamesmlawrence]

For anyone who's interested, here's a free link to Ron Shimek's article, Is Your Reef Anorexic, in the November/December CORAL:

Coral Feeding Article

Tim Wijgerde talks about the phenomenal appetites of several SPS coral species and compares the growth rates of SPS corals being fed or just kept under light in the same issue.