where to get food for coral???

[tigershark]

hi guys, may i know where can i get micro-plankton or brine shrimp? i'm thinking to get brain coral & mushroom coral and from some article, i found that these is their food...

also, where can i get Sand Sifting Sea Star fish & cleaner shrimp? how much is the market price? thank's in advance....

[hongqixian]

I wouldn't advise the sand-sifting star. It can strip your sand bed of all the good critters that you want.

Live brine shrimp can get at most normal freshwater petshops. One would be Clementi Florist and Aquarium at $3 a pack. Tends to be high in nitrates and unwanted stuff so use sparingly.

Micro plankton can be obtained from bottled dead plankton products such as Kent Marine Phytoplex. About $8 a bottle.

Cleaner shrimps are around $7 apiece for skunk cleaners and $10 apiece for blood/fire shrimp.

Brain corals can be fed defrosted food such as mysis but use sparingly - high in nitrates. Mushrooms rely mostly on photosynthesis and bits of food they scavenge.

[Achilles Tang]

Mysis are not high in nitrates.

Where did you get that info from?

[tigershark]

wat is mysis?

[Achilles Tang]

Mysis shrimp.

Very small shrimp. Highly nutritious, mostly protein.

Hikari brand is common.

More info here!

[hongqixian]

I might have made a mistake... not sure, but generally, quite a few brands of frozen food contains a lot of phosphates and nitrates. It's a good idea to rinse the food in a sieve or something before feeding.

[Achilles Tang]

Oh... i see what you mean... yes, I am aware that some brands of frozen food use some kind of preservatives which have high levels of phosphate salts in them.

Overfeeding may cause nuisance algae blooms.

What I do normally is that i will rinse my frozen foods in fresh water or salt water do rinse out small particles and juices.

I do think that the juices and small particles will be utilized by corals like the sun corals and copepods. But the danger is estimating how much is too much.

You have to understand the capabilities of your filtration system, natural or mechanical.

[hongqixian]

It would be easier to rinse and then chop up/mash frozen krill/mysis if the tiny bits are wanted

[leejwa]

hi guys, may i know where can i get micro-plankton or brine shrimp? i'm thinking to get brain coral & mushroom coral and from some article, i found that these is their food...

also, where can i get Sand Sifting Sea Star fish & cleaner shrimp? how much is the market price? thank's in advance....

Try Phytoplex from Kent Marine...good natural stuff! Brineshrimps, you must either hatch yourself or wait till the local aquariums carry them.

[CKS]

Or just feed the brain coral fresh seafood.

Small piece of shrimp or alike works well.

Tried 'Tetra Fresh Delica - brineshrimp' with success, its easier to feed becoz its in paste form.

[fisher]

Hi guys,

Just like to know live brine shrimp survive in freshwater or saltwater.Becos i just bought a pkt from clementi...so just wonder can i add

freshwater to it.???And where can i find cleaner shrimp ..been to a lor halus today but disppointed...

Rgds fisher

[kelstorm]

Hi guys,

Just like to know live brine shrimp survive in freshwater or saltwater.Becos i just bought a pkt from clementi...so just wonder can i add

freshwater to it.???And where can i find cleaner shrimp ..been to a lor halus today but disppointed...

Rgds fisher

Brineshrimp have to use saltwater to keep them alive.. the water that they live in in the packet is usually contaminated with the waste that they accumulated. and u cannot add tapwater to them..

as for cleaner shrimps, try Sealife in balestier? Hong leong in west coast?..

[Tanzy]

Brine = very salty water. They won't survive very long in freshwater, couple of seconds at the most. Actually, the salinity of seawater is lower than the salinity of the salt lakes where they come from.

[hongqixian]

Tanzy, I disagree on that point because SG bs are kept at around 1.016 salinity-stingy LFS and they live at least more than 10 min in the freshwater tank. Dunno if they live longer though, they are all guzzled up by then

[Tanzy]

Perhaps the freshwater tanks aren't that fresh after all. I tried keeping sea monkeys in freshwater after I ran out of the saltmix a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, they didn't survive quite as long.

Good coral food is available from Brine Shrimp Direct.

[Achilles Tang]

I feed Golden Pearls, decapsulated brine shrimp eggs and live plytoplankton and rotifers to my corals/fish/live sand inhabitants.

[Tanzy]

Aren't you suppose to hatch those eggs first before feeding? Didn't know corals like eggs the way we do.

[hongqixian]

I used to sprinkle a lot of de-bs eggs and watch my late mandarin nibble at them. I don't think it had much nutritional value though. What are golden pearls?

[Tanzy]

Golden Pearls are a micro food product from www.brineshrimpdirect.com

[Achilles Tang]

Decapsulated BB eggs are much more nutritious than newly hatch BBS.

The energy used in hatching by BBS is still unused in decap BB eggs.