Feed Corals...What do you use?

[GPCRalph]

Hi,

I have a few corals in my tank and aside from supplementing with mostly ionic additives (ie. Calcium, Strontium, Iodide, etc.) I haven't "fed" my corals anything. I have green Ricordea, a red mushroom, favea (I think), and a Kenyan tree coral. I have heard of DT's Phytoplankton and was considering getting that. Should I? Will the corals use it or will it be a waste? Do I need to feed fleshy foods to anything? I read on a post by Metznreef something about feeding a ricordea...what is it?

Sorry if this seems stupid but I have never fed any of my corals anything before and I am sure that they wouldn't mind it if I did. Back home I have a frogsprawn, a galaxia, and some mushrooms. Do they need to be fed also? Could you guys give me a general idea bout this? or Could you just tell me what corals you have and what you feed them?

 

Thanks,

Ralph

[anthony812]

DT or Black Powder are breat products to feed your corals, but as recordia adn shrooms, you can feed them meaty food such as clam,shrinp,whatever..just place the food near their mouth and they will do the rest.

[Jefe12234]

I doubt phytoplankton would would provide much of a direct benefit to your corals. There are some corals that have been proven to consume phyto like Dendronephthya, Goniopora, etc, but most corals feed on zooplankton or DOC's (dissolved organic compounds). The phyto will help feed natural zooplankton in your tank which will in turn feed your corals, so it could indirectly help them. If you're looking to feed the corals directly, I would try larger meaty foods. Frozen foods from the LFS like mysis shrimp and others work well. Or better yet, do what I do. Go to the grocery store, or an asian food market if you can find one, and get some raw seafood. I use as many different types as I can find, shrimp, scallops, octopus, squid, etc. Sometimes you can find a bag of mixed seafood. Then put it in a blender with some water and whatever other foods you'd like to add. Freeze it in ziploc bags. Then when you want to use some, just break a little off and thaw it in some tank water. Most LPS will love this. Some of the mushrooms might too. I had a Tubastraea that would eat an unbelievable amount of this food.

 

I also feed phyto and golden pearls, but that's because I have a Goniopora (eats the phyto) and a gorgonian (eats GP's). You're corals probably wouldn't eat those things.

 

-Chris

[gobies]

I've been using Kent's MicroVert and Phytoplex in my tank (alternating them, 3x/week), and my stuff is growing. The flower leather in particular is growing like mad. This, despite my rather sucky lighting. I use an eyedropper with measurement markings on it, and squirt about 1/4ml into the clove/star polyps, another 1/4ml near the flower leather's fringy things, another 1/4ml near the hammer's mouths, and another 1/4ml over the mushroom rock.

 

I turn both pumps/powerheads off when I feed them.

[printerdown01]

Your tree coral MIGHT benifit from a phyto dose. Other things that will include the little critters in your tank, i.e. the tiny featherdusters that you probably have on your rocks, isopods, and other tiny little guys... Your ricordia and shrooms probably won't receive any major benifit, but your comunity as a whole will probably be happier... I would also discurage from folling the dosing recommendations on the bottle cut them by at LEAST half!! A) You don't have a ton of stuff in your tank that will consume the phyto and It is a nano and will polute easily anyway (so an overdose can be a serious problem!).

[Dave ESPI]

What Jefe Said...

I also use Marc weis coral vital, and a blend of natural seafoods I puree.

[tyoberg]

I feed my LPS chunks of uncooked thawed seafood.

 

Everything else just gets light (and they grow).

 

Ty

[Crakeur]

I've used all of the above mentioned sources (except the home blend - just don't have the time to puree my own - buy frozen mix for that) and I also use coral heaven from ipsf, when I have the time to mix it up. Put a few drops of that near anthelia polyps and they go nuts.

[Satchmo]

My ricordea loves shrimp pellets (the kind for FW fish). My frogspawn and caulastrea will take them too. And my yellow polyps greedily snatch up flake fish food. I don't feed my corals very much at all, they seem to do fine with just good lighting. But every now and then, I'll rip off little pieces of a raw shrimp and feed them with tweezers.

[spectre]

Here's what I use:

 

7 ml Kent's Microvert

7 ml Kent's Coral accel

10 ml Kents Phytoplex

2 oz of mysis shrimp

 

This is all blended together and target feed to all my corals once a week. I worked on this concoction for about 2 months to balance water quality and growth enhancement.

I may have created a monster, because now my corals are all growing like weeds and I will need to find them a larger home very soon.

I currently have a 20 gal. tall with 2x65w pc's, cpr bakpak skimmer, and one maxi-jet.

 

Corals:

1 - Red open brain (when I bought this it was about 3 inches in diameter, that was 7 months ago. Now it is almost 8 inches across when it expands and totally dominates the front of the tank)

1 - colony of yellow polyps

1- colony of green star polyps

1 - colony of blue mushrooms, with a green stripped mushroom hitchhiker

pulsing Xenia that splits every week or so..

1- colt coral that is trying to survive the Xenia onslaught (moved this coral yesterday to give it some space).