Feeding Corals

What do u buy to feed corals. I have pulslng xenia, hammer coral, kenya tree, a few polyps

I use Coral Frenzy once MAYBE twice a month. I feed after the lights have been out a couple hours.

thanks grim

Rods food corl mix. I've used almost every food on the market and this stuff is amazing. *puts on Billy Mays mask*. Do you have hungery corals? Then fill thouse empty calcium deposits with Rodds food reef mix.
http://www.rodsfood.com/coral.html
Its blend is designed for "frag tanks only". But when used to spot feed coral it does the trick that no other food will.

I'm going to use rods good on a coral prop tank I believe. I've read that it's amazing. Your hammer coral can actually eat frozen mysis and brine and other snail meaty foods. I feed my torch small pieces of krill even.

Corals will eat more food then you would imagine. I had my 40 breeder with a 40 sump running an ASM g2 skimmer, a 6" sock and an ATS just to handle how much feeding I did. The system worked great. My pump was pushing 1400 GPH in a 40G tank... O yeah and coral only... No fishies ever liked the high flow enough to not jump tank.

i dose my tank with phytoplex and zooplex from petsmart and i hand feed my brain coral but yeah i have the same coral plus more and they love that it

southernlost wrote:i dose my tank with phytoplex and zooplex from petsmart and i hand feed my brain coral but yeah i have the same coral plus more and they love that it

Good point. You can always mix in something like reef-roids as well. This is why I love reef keeping so much. It can be very experimental.

I'm not feeding anything, anymore. I used to feed all my LPS and recently fed all the sps but the only I grew is hydroids, cyano, sponges and vermitid snails. I truly believe now that photosynthetic corals do not need to be directly fed. I think the fauna and food to fish feed the corals. A pair of breeding Lysmata shrimp would be enough food to feed LPS and maybe SPS. There are enough copepods and amphipods breeding in my tank that the larvae from them would feed every coral in the tank without me having to add anything else. Loads of live rock and a refugium feed the corals better than I can manually.

ritter678 wrote:I'm not feeding anything, anymore. I used to feed all my LPS and recently fed all the sps but the only I grew is hydroids, cyano, sponges and vermitid snails. I truly believe now that photosynthetic corals do not need to be directly fed. I think the fauna and food to fish feed the corals. A pair of breeding Lysmata shrimp would be enough food to feed LPS and maybe SPS. There are enough copepods and amphipods breeding in my tank that the larvae from them would feed every coral in the tank without me having to add anything else. Loads of live rock and a refugium feed the corals better than I can manually.

+1 I agree with Gabe, I don't feed my corals either, it just adds to the bioload. I have tons of pods also. The only coral you need to feed directly is a non photosynthetic like Dendro's that get nothing from light.

Need to, no. Can if you keep up on things, yes. Faster growth.... You decide

This is one of "The Great Debates of Reefkeeping". You can ask 100 experienced reefers if they feed or not and it will probably be split 50/50.

copps wrote:Long ago I stopped feeding phytoplankton and anything geared towards feeding the corals, and have noticed no difference in coral health. While those foods may be beneficial, they are unnecessary. Exporting from the aquarium what you put in is a balancing act, and adding unnecessary foods only makes it more difficult.

I can't argue with his tank.

http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/current-issue/article/76-tank-of-the-month

I'll go on the record to say that I think soft corals don't need a scrap of intentional food, (increased growth or not). They are fed from dissolved foods and light. I have never seen a toadstool eat mysis, cyclopeeze, rod's food, coral frenzy, reef chili or anything else. Xenia and Star Polyps are believed to be one of the only corals that get all they need from light. LPS...maybe, they readily accept food when trained/offered. SPS...maybe, but less than LPS, (even though Eric "the swimmer" Borneman says they eat more than LPS I don't buy it. If you look at a sps reef in the ocean there isn't a scrap of nutrients detected in the water. Which means "ultra low nutrients" and probably scarce feeding on ZOOplankton is all they need. In my opinion phytoplankton is useless in most aquariums. No corals that I can think of feed off phytoplankton except the ones are are nearly impossible to keep in tanks, Dendronepthea, Gorgonians, etc. The only benefit to feeding phyto is that it will feed the critters that feed the corals, (copepods). If not used in correct amounts it would just add to the waste in the tank that hinders coral growth.

I will also go on the record to say that I think coral feeding is important for growth but it does not out weigh the need for clean water. I just don't think there's anyway we can provide all the food that corals need/want and maintain water quality. Corals can get what they need from light and indirect feeding. If we could provide the same conditions as the ocean where food comes in everyday and water exports the excess nutrients constantly then feeding coral is a good idea.

I looked at his tanks, looked at my tank, looked at his tanks, looked at my tanks, looked at his tanks, took a photo of my tank....then looked to see if I have Photoshop on my computer.
OK I lie, I looked at mine and thought "One day Yeti, one day".

Now on a serious note, can anyone recommend any books on coral keeping/husbandry please?
I know that a lot of information is available on the net, but I'm old school. When I want to learn and absorb, flick back a page or two to double check what I read etc. I like paper, not the net.

"Aquarium Corals " by Eric H. Borneman.

Gabe/Donnie you say you don't feed, however I have a concern. I have a real liking for the Feather Dusters, everything I have read says they need Phytoplankton or they will do the 2-3 cycle of shedding their head. Shed their head, re-grow half the size, starve, shed their heads and if lucky, re-grow a third of the head size, then dead.
Have you had any success/history in keeping these? I know they aren't everyone's cup of tea, so you may not have been tempted to keep them. Just wondered.

Yeti
I like the feather dusters too, below is a pic of one I have had since April and it has not shed its head and seems happy, its out most all the time. These guys get enough to eat from natural juice in the tank and also when feeding the fish they get some of the soup from the thawed mysis. They do ok without feeding as this one shows. I would like two or three more if I had a place to put them.

Yeti wrote:Gabe/Donnie you say you don't feed, however I have a concern. I have a real liking for the Feather Dusters, everything I have read says they need Phytoplankton or they will do the 2-3 cycle of shedding their head. Shed their head, re-grow half the size, starve, shed their heads and if lucky, re-grow a third of the head size, then dead.
Have you had any success/history in keeping these? I know they aren't everyone's cup of tea, so you may not have been tempted to keep them. Just wondered.

I have no problem keeping feather dusters and I have never dosed phytoplankton in any tank I have set up now. Now that being said, coco worms may be a different story. Those can be difficult to keep and may need phyto to survive. Regular Hawaiian feather dusters that you see at Petco all the time are much easier to keep. I don't know what they eat but they must pick up food particles from the water. There are relatively very few corals or inverts that need phyto to survive in aquariums. There are a few very nice looking corals that end up in LFSs that do need phyto to survive but even if you provide phyto the corals will need a constant drip of it to sustain them (Google non photosynthetic reef). My rocks are loaded with those tiny feather dusters with the white tubes and white crowns. I had 3 Hawaiian dusters in my 75 until a wrasse took a liking to them and killed them all. Jaiden has a big one in his tank now that is doing fine with no phyto feedings.

OK thanks guys. well in that case I'll keep my eyes open for some others.