Is feeding your coral worth it?
- Thread starter TangAddict
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Fish waste is certainly the most consistently available food source in my aquariums. Seems to work pretty well too.
The answer is yes and no. Some corals absolutely need to be fed. Some not so much. Photosynthesis requires a tremendous amount of energy and some time to produce results. By feeding, you’re essentially fueling the coral. You’re helping speed up the process. You won’t see a huge difference with some species of corals because they are very efficient at photosynthesis. Some corals like Duncan’s, acans, euphyllia, scoly’s, lobo’s, Candy canes, and zoas greatly benefit from feeding, particularly spot feeding. These guys aren’t very efficient at all and throwing them some meat gives them a ton of extra nutrients and energy. I’ve never noticed a huge difference when spot feeding sps. I do broadcast feed them so they are able to get something. Often times your fish will feed your corals more than enough. Leftovers from feeding and poop is enough to keep most corals happy even though they’d do better with spot feeding. I feed reef roids, mysis, live brine, cultured phyto, left over krill juice, and dose the tank with acro power. I do see a pretty drastic color change when I feed reef roids and dose acropower. Spot feeding is definitely worth the 5 minutes a day 2-3 times a week in my experience! Hope I helped you better understand how feeding helps the corals! 
It’s also important to change things up. When I feed, I never feed the same thing twice. It would be reef roids one day, brine the next feeding etc. I usually try to feed 3x per week. One day in between each feeding
According to the ingredients list on Seachem Zooplankton it is primarily ground up chinese prawns, brine shrimp and rotifers. I'm not saying that this can't be beneficial to corals but I wouldn't consider that a very natural coral diet. Manufacturer labels and claims can sometimes be misleading.
Following along. I find this interesting.
We feed our corals, and as someone who has studied marine biology I believe I can argue my way both in AND out of the value out of doing it in a tank setting. The responses in this post are excellent (in my humble opinion), but I'd like to speak to the benefits of feeding on one other aspect that is somewhat overlooked: the coral response/behavior.
As a newer hobbyist, I just love the way the corals behave to the feeding response. I feed once a week, and it's one of the most enjoyable things to me in the hobby just to watch the corals open, extend the fingers of their feeding polyps, mouths agape, and reeling nutrition in. I really get a sense of job satisfaction and care for our marine animals with it. I've seen excellent growth from some corals, and not anything exciting from others, but I do love the act of doing it, and watching the coral behavior to that chemical/food response.
We use a variety of foods, but have favored reef chili and reef roids. We dose phyto as well. So overall, I think the community could easily make arguments both for and against the "need" to feed, but I love doing it. I'd feed daily if I didn't think that would be overkill for corals and I wouldn't have to worry about nutrient levels later on.
As a newer hobbyist, I just love the way the corals behave to the feeding response. I feed once a week, and it's one of the most enjoyable things to me in the hobby just to watch the corals open, extend the fingers of their feeding polyps, mouths agape, and reeling nutrition in. I really get a sense of job satisfaction and care for our marine animals with it. I've seen excellent growth from some corals, and not anything exciting from others, but I do love the act of doing it, and watching the coral behavior to that chemical/food response.
We use a variety of foods, but have favored reef chili and reef roids. We dose phyto as well. So overall, I think the community could easily make arguments both for and against the "need" to feed, but I love doing it. I'd feed daily if I didn't think that would be overkill for corals and I wouldn't have to worry about nutrient levels later on.
I feed a home made brs type frozen food for the fish (tangs mostly) and mix in either reef roids or reef chili with acropower daily (2-3 times lately) and have found everything to respond really well. I find acropower to be the biggest improvement though. I am a believer after watching the brs video on wwc's feeding method. High nutrient in, high nutrient export. As long as nitrate and phosphates are in check, everything does well. I try to spot feed the LPS with pellets once a week. I know it's anecdotal, but I don't think I could go back.
I feed my Acans, Duncan, Candy canes every other day with LRS nano. You should see the size of a chunk they can swallow. The next day they poop it out as brown as brown can be, to me that means they digested it. I have a 50 ml syringe with a plastic straw that I use to feed reef roids. I have a blue mouth Leptastrea that I just let the reef roids float down on to until the thing is brown and 10 minutes latter it(well all hundreds of polyps it consist of ) are back to looking like they did before I feed them(meaning they ate it all). All my Palys do the same. Zoas not so much. I then target feed my sps corals( montis,stylos acros,etc) with reef roids. After about 15 minutes I turn on just the wave pumps for 1/2 hour to blow the roids around for the sps corals. Does any of this help, I can't say as I've never not fed them to find out. But the corals are growing really good so I not going to stop.
I won the acro growout contest here in 2014 or so, those threads are gone now but i made no secret of what i did, spot fed that acro every night with appropriate sized food. Won me a hydra light as the prize. It works dramatically to boost growth if you can keep you water chemistry in check.
What would you consider appropriate sized food? Reef roids? Something else?
Depends on what you are feeding, some lps can take pretty big items like mysis shrimp and ignore smaller food, for acros in the range of 100-400 micron works well. Monti have about the smallest polyps and need on the smaller end. Baby brine shrimp are fantastic. Lots of research out there on acro feeding now like the linked articles.
In my experience the growth of corals depend the most on lighting. I believe most of the organic matter corals need are provided by feeding fishes.
However, I've been feeding my corals weekly for last couple of years. I turn off powerheads during feeding trying to allow corals have chance to catch the food. However, I wonder how much of the food I add are actually taken up by the corals eventually. I'd be happy if it's at least 10% .. where does the rest go to? Is there a paper that discusses this?
However, I've been feeding my corals weekly for last couple of years. I turn off powerheads during feeding trying to allow corals have chance to catch the food. However, I wonder how much of the food I add are actually taken up by the corals eventually. I'd be happy if it's at least 10% .. where does the rest go to? Is there a paper that discusses this?
I agree with you and every tank has different needs. We been making our own food now for about 6 months for small fish to medium fish and all size corals, filter feeders we have, and have finally got a formula that works amazing and we are happy. We also supplement mysis.
The short answer is no.
But there are 2 catches.
– If you are keeping non-photo synthetic corals - then yes as these corals need to be target fed in order for them to stay alive and flourish in your tank.
– If you want LPS corals such as acans to growth faster as many of these corals are slow growing by nature though, so the reward vs. effort of target feeding them not worth it
Corals get plenty of food from lights as well from the fish poop floating around in your tank water. If you never target feed them, they’ll do fine.
Target feeding isn’t required but can be fun if you enjoy seeing your corals polyps retract when they grab a piece of food. Be careful as target feeding your corals will also introduce nutrients into your tank. If you go overboard and feed too much, you’ll likely inherit nuisance algae issues.
Some good foods to target feed your corals with if you want to see your corals eat are:
But there are 2 catches.
– If you are keeping non-photo synthetic corals - then yes as these corals need to be target fed in order for them to stay alive and flourish in your tank.
– If you want LPS corals such as acans to growth faster as many of these corals are slow growing by nature though, so the reward vs. effort of target feeding them not worth it
Corals get plenty of food from lights as well from the fish poop floating around in your tank water. If you never target feed them, they’ll do fine.
Target feeding isn’t required but can be fun if you enjoy seeing your corals polyps retract when they grab a piece of food. Be careful as target feeding your corals will also introduce nutrients into your tank. If you go overboard and feed too much, you’ll likely inherit nuisance algae issues.
Some good foods to target feed your corals with if you want to see your corals eat are:
- Reef Roids
- Cyclop-eeze
- Mysis shrimp
- brine shrimp
- coral frenzy
- fish eggs
On the topic of feeding size. I have a torch that’s about 3 inches in diameter and it eats shrimp pieces about the size of a penny. Takes a bit to get it all in but it’s fat and happy. I feed once a week.
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