Amino Acids and Non Photosynthetic Coral

[ethanmathis32]

With the growing popularity in the reefing hobby of Amino Acids such as Red Sea’s Reef Energy AB+, I am curious if it makes NPS corals such as Sun Corals and certain Gorgonians, that have been historically considered difficult to keep because of feeding requirements, a bit more accessible to less seasoned hobbyists.

For example, Sun Corals have often been understood to need every polyp target fed very frequently in order to thrive in a reef tank, often leading to a battle with nitrates and phosphates. Thus, they would generally be considered a difficult coral to care for. But it seems even daily doses of Reef Energy in my tank impacts nutrients far less than say target feeding reef roids. Would, then, an nps coral like the sun coral be able to get enough nutrition from the reef energy to not need to be target fed quite as often? Thus, making nutrient control less of an issue.

 

[andrewey]

Welcome to reef2reef!

My suspicion is that the concentration of amino acids present via broadcast feeding (dosed into a tank) pales (by orders of magnitude in comparison to the nutrition derived from "target feeding" smaller micron foods. I suspect the contribution from traditional amino acid dosages is small enough that in comparison to large changes in target feeding frequency, (e.g. feeding 2-3x week to 1-2xweek), the dosage needed to be equivalent would either be cost prohibitive or associated with the similar effect on nutrient levels.