Feeding SPS
 

Quick question making the switch from LPS and softies to SPS and just wondering what most people feed their SPS corals? Is it a neccessity to feed them.. what do most people reccommend. Thanks.

Coral frenzy
Salifert coral food
Booze(really 10 ml/100gal)

I don't feed anything, occasional stirring of the sand and basting of the rock creates a storm of "food".
I did try feeding for a year or so, never noticed any difference.

I have a fishless tank = no poop

what u mean by booze? and where do you get the coral fenzy from and salitert

I use fish poo:smile:
Reef Roids
Phytoplankton

I bought my stuff from Ocean Aquatics....Voldka dosing

So you add vodka to your tank? Sorry I have never heard this and it sounds so strange.

I don't feed them ever.

I've been trying KZ's Coral Vitalizer... my SPS colony has responded to something, as I have ALOT of new growth at the tips.

The corals are using the ethanol as a 2nd carbon source...dose carefully. My corals drink a bottle a month...not the good stuff of course

Feed mine strong light, and do my best to maintain consistent levels of calcium. I have tried doing other things but noticed no improvement...and doing a 450+G system is expensive so I have not considered trying dosing for a long time.

Fish poop, and sometimes i get bored and feed some cyclopeeze, reef roids, and coral frenzy.. maybe once a week or whenever i feel like it really. I dont notice any difference when i feed those though so i mostly just do my regular WC, and keep calc and alk balanced. Right now i am doing 5-10% WC a week.. i am not sure if i had better results with doing less say one WC every 1-3months or doing small 5-10% weekly.. i think about the same TBH. Sometimes i feel as if whenever i do water changes it gets everything out of balance and until it balances everything out again the corals do great. But i like the idea of small regular WC's.. and 5-10% a week is nothing to me..and only take a small amount of my time and adds those trace elements back again.

Sometimes I wish I had poop :)

what types of alcohol are people using or does it matter

I think the main one is Vodka

Everclear is too expensive...other people dose with vinegar.

so bourbon wouldnt have the same effect then huh? oh well i didnt want to share anyway lol.

Vinegar
Poo
Phyto
Fishfood/Selcon

whats the reasoning behind vinegar and how much does a person use?

Same as vodka dosing.
I add mine to my Kalk/makeup topoff bucket. Vinegar also increases the soluability of Kalk and lowers the Ph. I use 10ml/gallon of makeup water.

can it be added directly to the tank. what are the benefits?

acetate is used by the corals more readlily than booze. I don't use vingear because you have to neutralize it before use

corals dont feed from anything in vodka,its bacteria that dose

Um, yes but in a drip only, dont do it all at once, the pH is like 12 or so. Benefits? well that is still open to discussion, same as vodka dosing. Best place to look it up are all the usual spots. RC, Adv. aquar., reefkeeping.com etc

I feed fish Poo and Light with some pods coming from my refugium that is fed by Phyto.
I also keep reef levels and add Amino's and Ultralive.
No Carbon or PO4 remover.

You have that the wrong way around, vinegar is an acid with a very low pH.. Kalk is the one with the high (12.65) pH

Mostly vinegar, vodka and sugar supplies a carbon source for bacteria to feed on. The bacteria in turn take up nitrates, phosphates and other nutrients before algae can and the bacteria then becomes a food source for corals, fish and filter feeders as well as being skimmed out of the water with protien skimmers....at least I think this is the theory

yeah vodka dosing (carbon dosing) doesn't feed corals. It feeds bacteria which drop the nutrients of the tank, which lowers the zooxanthalae populations of the corals (lightening colour) and makes your SPS expand they're polyps like everyone wants because they're hungry (theoretically *winks*). Not something to be trifled with without some prior research I'd recommend. Doubling your tank's TOC (total organic carbon) instantly with an incorrect dose can bleach an entire tank of SPS. People are starting to understand how carbon dosing works and there's some good resources out there in case you're interested.

I dose amino acids and coral vitalizer from KZ because they're really clean products and don't contribute to algae like some of the others out there. They're not food though, they're more like steroids and have the best results in zero nutrient systems (vodka dosing, zeovit, reef-fresh, etc etc). They're most effective in these systems because then your corals are being starved like body builders before a competition.

The only "food" that you can put in yourself and that's worth feeding, IMHO, is live phyto and rotifers. Emphasis on live. That's if you want to go through the trouble of raising colonies.

There's a good article that can be found on advancedaquarist.com that compares no feeding, feeding phytomax, and feeding live phytoplankton. The tank with no feeding had the same growth as the tank with phytomax (surprise? lol). The tank fed live phytoplankton had DOUBLE the growth of the other two tanks. It was SPS they were testing.

Hey Sean, you wouldn't happen to have a link to that one, by any chance? Please and thank you?

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