Feeding corals
 

As I'm new at corals i have been reading a lot about feeding and see their is much debate on dosing with iodine, trace elements, etc. i have added quite a few coral frags, 2 a week for the last month, more or less done and now want to see them grow & be happy. So i went to my lfs asking what i need to keep them happy and instead of selling me all the additives for everything they said to use a combination of Copepods, rotifers, phyto plankton. They are suppose to create a controlled cycle of food that will not crash my tank and keep my corals fed along with my standard weekly water changes to take care of all the trace elements, etc that my coral need.

Does this sound right as i have not seen much on the subject of all three together before? Would love some advice on feeding, i will list what i got below & a pic to help with the explanations, thanks in advance for all of your help!

Tank:
IM Nuvo 8 w/upgraded pump w/ spinstream, extra marine glo bulb on top of stock LED lighting. Ff, pce&purigen in custom caddy & live rock in stock media basket. Cuc, snails only & no fish as of yet.

Corals:
Corky finger gorgonian. Devils hand, toadstool mushroom leather, hairy orange/green mushrooms. Orange montipora digiata, birdsnest, green montipora plate SPS. Various colony polyps. White pop pop xenia. Colt tree. Various ricordia mushrooms & small rock with some polyps.

It's what I do. I'm lucky that I can get my hands on all three and feed them slog with some powdered foods occasionally. I still dose some elements but not to the extent that some do.

I feed my fish, that's it. Don't really see any point to adding extra stuff that won't directly get to corals. And my corals do pretty good without any feeding.

Drfu, if your objective is to grow corals, I would concentrate only on keeping your water clean and chemicals balanced.
You have corals from one spectrum to the other. By that, I mean that you have corals that thrive in a low sediment environment and ones that thrive in a high sediment environment. Not all corals require the same conditions.

Your devils hand is going to secrete a waxy substance that helps keep it's surface clean. That waxy substance will irritate your SPS corals.
You have corals that require high water flow and corals that require low water flow.
Your tank is not big enough to create both environments effectively.

What have you read so far on the subject of coral feeding?

I do not recommend feeding corals via the water column in a small tank. The reason being that it is very easy to pollute a small tank. When feeding the water column, most of the food doesn't even get to the corals - it ends up getting lodged in live rock and sand. Some corals benefit from water column feeding, but I don't suggest it in your tank. You can target feed corals by physically putting the food into the tentacles with feeding tweezers or dropping food through rigid tubing aimed at the coral, but I don't see any in your list that would benefit much from that. Corals like Open/Closed Brains, Plate Corals, Acans, Scolymia, Candy Canes, etc LOVE target feeding. Keep in mind that ANY food that goes into the system no matter what delivery method are nutrients that need to come out via skimming or water changes. It is very easy to overload a nano and end up with algae troubles.

I didnt see much in term of "sediment" when it came to coral care. I have been using liveaquaria as a guide in terms of lighting & wager flow, have my pumps placed accordingly as well as placement for lighting. Where the feeding came up is the mention of dosing of trace elements.

Good to know about the Devils hand, when i have seen it shed, twice now, i have removed the gunk from the tank but should it ve removed to a bigger tank that i have?

As for the trace elements, i was thinking that my weekly water changes should have taken care of it. I have my calcium always over 450, alk @ 200, ph is 8.0, magnesium @ 1350. I have seachems fuel if needed but have not been using it that much.

I have a larger 15 gallon column that is done its cycle and will be moving some of my corals to it, the devils hand could be one of them.

I have looking for a PAR meter from Apogge to rent but no luck so far.

And do you think its beneficial?

Good advice, i have a tube coral that i spot feed it omega one reef formula frozen cubes once a week.

I agree that most of my corals are photosynthetic and the water column should do with whats in he oceans reef crystals.

This is where the extra feeding comes in, do the polyps need spot feeding too? This is where the mix of three might come in handy i thought?

I don't think their is anything wrong with that, I'm just making sure they are all happy, i have added some others too, like a orange digi, monti plate and thought they may need more as they are listed as not being beginners corals

If you're polluting the water in the attempt to make them happy, it's not going to make them happy :) Especially if they don't actually eat any of what you dump in.

I spot feed all my LPS in my frag tank and nothing in mt DT. I haven't noticed a real difference in color or growth patterns so far. Only been doing it for 3 months.

Sorry my post wasn't clear, I'm saying that there is nothing wrong in just letting them feed off whats in the tank from feeding fish & whats already in the tank from water changes. I am concerned as to what i put in the tank, as i see a lot of dosing around and I'm sure some of its necessary I'm sure much of it is not and i don't want to be one of those that doses with everything !

Drfu,
Trace elements are not what feed corals. :smile: Trace elements provide the minerals necessary for the corals to carry out their life functions.
Simply put, to feed a coral, they require sugar and protein. The zooxanthellae through photosynthesis provide the sugar. For protein, corals need to capture prey and digest it.
SPS corals require much less protein than larger fleshy corals. SPS corals can get by with bacterioplankton which will occur naturally in your aquarium.
Photosynthetic corals with a larger fleshy mass require more protein than that and will benefit from extra feeding.
Non-photosynthetic corals require all their nutrients from capturing prey.
If you try to keep all those corals in the same aquarium, you will end up either underfeeding the larger fleshy corals or overfeeding the smaller SPS corals. Nutrient overload will give you algae problems and suffering corals.

I don't come across much in the way of debate anymore regarding coral feeding other than aquarists trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. They try to force corals to survive in environments that are unsuitable, trying to create a certain look but become discouraged when they run into inevitable excess nutrient problems.

In order to save you some grief down the road, I would suggest that you limit your coral selection to a certain type, learn about the proper care for them and keep those corals only.
There are quite a number of good studies out that will help you learn about coral feeding.

Good advice, thx.

When you say only keep one type do you mean only sps soft or hard,lps only or softies? Is that too much of a blanket statement or are their types of corals that just require the same care, ie all photosynthetic that require just proper lighting/flow/placement within a tank and let the water column take care of the rest. If this is the case then is their a list of these on one spot? Their are so many types of them out there & like you said, to save grief down the road. Thanks again for your input!

If you could explain this to my LPS, I would appreciate it. Even without protein, they refuse to stay small :)

It depends on what you want for an aquarium and how much work/expense you want to put into it.
A high nutrient environment tank will take a lot of involvement on your part. You would need to be constantly adding and removing food in order to prevent excess nutrient problems.
A low nutrient tank would be easier to take care of. I don't like a small tank having soft corals (like leathers) because they would outgrow it quickly.
SPS are very sensitive to water quality and a small tank's parameters can change very quickly, so I wouldn't recommend those.
If you're interested in actively feeding corals, I would go with Myka's suggestion and have LPS corals which you could target feed; they are very forgiving plus relatively slow growing. They don't absolutely require feeding on your part but it's interesting to watch.

Sure, send me their email address.

The nice thing about LPS is they have that big mucous covering which catches all sorts of things. With the great flow your tank has, along with the fish, you have a lot of detritus available to them - and with detritus essentially being bacteria clumping onto DOC's, falling to the bottom, they have lots to eat.
- but then you already knew that....:)

They're too young, I don't let them have their own accounts :)

How's bout just don't feed your corals anything but good ol fish poop? I've never fed my corals anything for years and they grow really good.
But I'm trying an expirement at the moment. I've started feeding Coral Frenzy since begining of Jan. I see no difference other than more pea soup in my skimmer cup and an ugly paly that's decided to spread quite fast. I'm doing this until June.

I have to agree with this. I never feed my corals, they seem happy.

My advice is simply that your tank is small and feeding the corals can easily cause water pollution which will be a much bigger detriment to the corals than not feeding them will be.

If you really just want to "do something", then add a few drops (literally) per day of LIVE phytoplankton which will help to increase the zooplankton population in your tank. Then your corals can eat zooplankton as it comes along.

Here's a great article on zooplankton feeding, along with videos of coral feeding.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2011/10/corals

I think that is the way i wanna go which is why at my lfs they have 3 live tanks of phytoplankton, rotifiers & copepods. They tell me that as the first multiplies the second eats them and the third eats the second sustaining all three in balance. Im not sure if any of this true which is why i possed the first question. Hope this helps in my thought process or am i/they out to lunch?

That theory is a bit out to lunch. Both Copepods and Rotifers eat phytoplankton. Any of the Copepods that I imagine you would be wanting to put into your tank don't eat Rotifers. Do you see any 'pods in your tank currently? Look close. If there are some, you can simply add a tiny amount of live phytoplankton a few times per week or so and the pods that are already in your tank will increase in population.