feeding coral

[kouz]

Hi bro,

For those bro that culture their own plankton culture system....may i know how often do u feed your coral.

Right now i have been feeding it everyday, coz the plankton seem to mature pretty fast....and i have heard from most LFS that coral arent suppose to be fed everyday.

so what are the right way to do>>??

Thanks

[bawater]

maybe the LFS usually sells plastic corals.

In the wild , corals feed everyday .but they also get a 100% water change abt every 2 mins.

The problem is that you need to balance your filtration to your feeding, the more export you can do- the more input you can have.

Another important element is the food chain- there is no way u can reproduce the range and variety of food sizes and nutrition in the home tank but You can use selective feeding and pick a range of foods within 2microns(0.02mm) to 1,000microns(1mm) and rotate the feeding.

What u feed depends on what you keep. Anything uneaten will decay and lead to water problems.

i feed:

1ltr of phytoplankton 5 days a week (2 days rest) currently 2 strains of micro algae- hopefully more in future. (2 microns & 6 microns)

10-20ml of frozen zooplankton a week. (mixture range 1-1000microns)

4ltr volume of live rotifers 3 times a week.(100-150microns)

Fish food mixture that contains> mysis shrimp,brine shrimp,squid,prawn,mussels,lobster eggs,fish eggs,cyclops-eze,dried hawaiian spirulina powder(60 microns).

baby brine shrimp once a month (400-600microns)

Just started Seachem reef plus- amino acids and trace metal mixture.

*The fish food is not blended- its frozen and grated or finely chopped. serves both fishes like anthias,clowns to tangs and meat eating corals like brains.

You know how much nutrients the above products produce?-without proper export you will end up with a beautiful silky maroon cyano covered tank.

i run a DSB, 2x skimmers, a 1x2ft refugium,500g of contraphos or rowaphos and 1 or 2 polyfilter pads constantly.

No floss,no bio balls or anything else that can trap detrius.

After 11mths(from Jan to Nov) of tweaking i have finally made the balance and read zero NO3 and zero PO4.

It wasn't fun dealing with the toothing problems(trust me ! it comes one after another)- but great joy in feeding and watching damaged corals recover.

[SBS_Transit]

can u just buy all those u mention, all in different bottles ? Nothing is live, all comes from bottles.

[bawater]

sure ;)its the more expensive method, but you will wonder why u spend so much on food...and slowly start to leave item by item out after some months when it runs out(which is the time needed for your system to get used to the additional input and you get to see the benefits).

You can get everything within the lavender/balestier area and armed with $100 (i didn't say it was cheap but it will last 2 or 3 mths)

>a bottle of DT (OP)

>frozen zooplankton (PR)

>live rotifers (watercircle) or replace with golden pearls -rotifer size*

Reborn:

>golden pearls *rotifer size

>MBF range of foods abt $5 each - mysis,brine shrimp,squid, prawn meat,mussel,fish eggs (comes in the mix packs). you are spoiled for choice in the range of MBF available, they also have 2 kinds of krill,silverfish,red/green frozen plankton and a few other kind- only as deep as your pockets can go.

>brine shrimp eggs (hatch yourself)