selcon/garlic guard/ and corals?

[pat8you]

Ok so i know that soaking food in selcon or garlic guard helps boost the nutrition in your food and promote healthy immune systems and all that. My question is will either one of those help corals? I have several corals that i spot feed including my sun coral. Would these help my sun coral or is it a fish only thing?

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

In reading scientific stuff about those supplements, I believe it's mostly anecdotal evidence that it helps fish - nothing really has been proven. So I would imagine it'd be the same for corals... nothing proven.

With that said though, I do spot feed my corals leftover mysis when I soak it in Selcon. I don't feed them anything with garlic though. No special reason... that's just what I do.

 

[pat8you]

Yeah i guess i'll try it out and maybe i'll be able to see a difference. I figure it can't really hurt them so why not.

 

[roka64]

I agree, the article I read about garlic simply stated that fish treated with garlic were less likely to be re-infected.
Selcon and Zoe (I use all 3) are supplements, for added nutrition (like us taking vitamins and such).
I imagine the corals would get some of the mixture via water movement.

 

[cmor1701d]

I thnk Scott hit it. The corals will benefit, if at all, from it being in the water column. Garlic is not a natural reef suplement. I have no idea how the thought of feeding our fish garlic would help them but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that is does. Then again it just may due to better husbandry which included using the garlic juice after a disease outbreak /cure period.

I use it as well as Selcon when I hydrate my freeze dried mysis.

 

[pat8you]

Do you guys think if i soaked my mysis in some selcon that i was gong to feed to my sun coral that it would help it at all? I don't know much of anything about coral digestion or nutrition.

 

[Innovator]

Selcon is a watered down version of Selco. Selco is a wonderful enrichment additive; however, is best used in gut-loading feedstock such as nauplii or soaking in algaes such as Nori. Delbeek has produced studies of visible growth in non-photosynthetic corals using selco as an enrichment additive, but what %'s are taken in and more importantly utilized I do not know. The selcon will merely wash right off as soon as it hits the water since it is just coating the outer shell of the mysis. If you are going to feed mysis I would mash it up since their size and shell may inhibit proper digestion. You may even mix in cyclop-eeze and dt's oyster eggs if available.

 

[melosu58]

I`ve used the DT`s oyster eggs with good results that James is talking about.

 

[pat8you]

My sun coral seems to eat all the mysis it can get its tenticles on. Will oyster eggs or cyclop-eeze be so small that they will be hard for the sun coral to catch? Where can i get some selco since i have only seen selcon in stores and such. Last one, what is nauplii?

 

[Innovator]

I'm sure it takes in mysis quite readily, but perhaps easier to digest if proportioned smaller. There shouldn't be any problem with the ability to catch/consume cyclop-eeze, oyster eggs, or other zooplankton. Selcon can be found:
SELCO

**Almost forgot, Nauplii is Artemia fry, freshly hatched brine shrimp.