What should I feed my corals?

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flyingfish 2626

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jun 24, 2008
Messages
11
Sorry for the Noob question but currently I am feeding my corals cyclopeeze 1 time every 2 weeks and I am wondering if I am staving them. What do you guys recommend, something like marine snow or Chromaplex, ChromaMax, or Zooplex? I have a Nova 210 watt T5 on them right now for 8 hours a day. Current list of corals:
Frogspawn 3 head
Green flowerpot
Zoos and Ricordia mushrroms
Califlower coral
yellow and green polyp
cup coral
yellow clove
candy cane
Thanks for your help!
 
many people dont feed their corals at all (unless the corals have special needs) i think u should be fine with what youre doing.
 
Only thing I'd do is maybe squirt some mysis shrimp around the frogspawn once a week or so. You've pretty much just listed the common names for things and not the "real" names, so I'm not really sure what all you have - specifically the "cup coral". Regarding the flowerpot... those (goniopora) corals have reported bad rates of survival in our tanks, so don't be surprised if it doesn't look good over time... regardless of what you feed it.

Other than that, I wouldn't personally feed any of the other things you listed. But if your water quality isn't suffering from the cylopeeze feedings, I wouldn't stop it either!
 
I dont target feed any of my corals except the orange sun polyps which you have too. The majority of my corals get all they need from the lighting and water column. I`ve had some of my corals for over ten yrs now and they dont seem to be suffering. You can check them out in my images to see what they are and what they look like.
 
Most soft corals including gorgonians will feed upon phytoplankton (algae) since their predatory instincts are rather weak. Bacterioplankton (bacteria) is a food source for all corals and usually referred to as 'Marine Snow.' Zooplankton (microscopic organism/animal), of those visible to the naked eye, is fed upon by stony corals and lps. Their capability to capture prey is much greater than that of soft corals. And of course, there is Dissolved Organic Matter. There are no hard rules so just because stony corals are thought of as more predatory doesn't mean that there aren't less-aggressive corals in that genre at prey capture. So, anyways, now that I have bored you with this quick summary I would probably try a mash of cyclop-eeze, sea urchin roe, phytoplankton (sparingly), and Marine Snow. You could also throw in liquid additives such as Selco and mix this all together with a variety of fish foods (fish, clam, mussels, nori, spirulina, mysis, krill, etc.) This would be a lovely overall mixture to get anyone started I think, just as long as you don't go overboard in the dosing ;) Oh, and make sure to turn off your filters so the corals actually have a greater % of consuming the food. Once or twice/week feedings would be fine. Just because a nutrient level is increased doesn't mean the life within is suffering either ;)
 
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