Coral Feeding Question

[Cscultho]

Reefing Peeps,

Is it really necessary that we need to feed corals? (reef roids, RS AB+, so on....)

Or is it ok to not feed if you have fish and the fish food alone feeds the coral?

Reason for my question is once I started feeding reef roids, AB+....Dino's exploded. And before the question is asked, my nitrates and phosphates were not 0. (My opinion and just my opinion only is Dino's are not triggered by 0 N & P)

Thoughts?

 

[bradreef]

Gonis and a couple others, probably best to feed. Otherwise its not totally necessary but can help growth.

 

[randomfishdude]

No it's not.
You only haft to feed nps.
But if you feed corals they often grow faster.

 

[Cscultho]

Gonis and a couple others, probably best to feed. Otherwise its not totally necessary but can help growth.

I do have a Goni -- what do you feed yours? I fear using coral food because a Dino explosion will happen

 

[Cscultho]

No it's not.
You only haft to feed nps.
But if you feed corals they often grow faster.

What is an NPS coral?

 

[Troylee]

I do have a Goni -- what do you feed yours? I fear using coral food because of a Dino explosion will happen

Feed it what ever you want but use a pipette instead of broad cast feeding your tank.. we don’t need to feed corals anything really, fish poop is the best you’re gonna get! Nps are non photosynthetic corals. They don’t use light as an energy source so they need food.

 

[randomfishdude]

What is an NPS coral?

Non photosynthetic stony

 

[bradreef]

I do have a Goni -- what do you feed yours? I fear using coral food because a Dino explosion will happen

I feed reef roids. You might want to get past the dino phase because it can boost them. I ending up using silicates to get past dinos and still fed during that time

 

[jda]

Non Photo Synthetic - filter feeders like sun corals, whips, most gorgonians chili corals, etc. There are many of these. The largest issue with keeping them is that they need a LOT of food, but also good water quality, in most cases.

Light feed your coral the most and is the only for-sure source of getting carbon/sugars/energy to your coral. You need to feed nothing else. It amazes me that people want to drop in all kinds of particle food yet run limited spectrum and "just enough" lighting. Light is one of the few things that if you give a coral more, it can do more with it - this is not true of building blocks which cannot do anything with excess.

 

[VintageReefer]

Reef roids is notorious for causing nutrient spikes and the things that come with it.

Try benepets benereef food instead. It’s great for all corals

Ab+ I’ve used on and off many times over the years, I only saw a benefit when I was keeping a sps reef.

 

[jda]

(My opinion and just my opinion only is Dino's are not triggered by 0 N & P)

Thoughts?

This is totally accurate, but the masses of parrots on the internet post it a lot. Many have experienced dinos at the same time that they had lower N and P levels but don't understand that they do not cause one and another.

When you introduce "coral foods" in your tank, you are going to give building blocks and maybe some energy to EVERYTHING. Most of the things in your tank are probably better at using these building blocks and energy than the corals. High tide can lift all ships, as they say.

Fish waste is very likely a better source to feed your corals, so make your fish happier and just feed them more. In the same vein as above, the extra fish waste will feed other things too and can also raise your residual waste product levels like no3 and po4 too high, so there is no free pass to just feed your fish all that you want either without upping the export.

 

[Uncle99]

They don’t require direct feedings, but mine seem to like it from time to time.

 

[Cscultho]

This is totally accurate, but the masses of parrots on the internet post it a lot. Many have experienced dinos at the same time that they had lower N and P levels but don't understand that they do not cause one and another.

When you introduce "coral foods" in your tank, you are going to give building blocks and maybe some energy to EVERYTHING. Most of the things in your tank are probably better at using these building blocks and energy than the corals. High tide can lift all ships, as they say.

Fish waste is very likely a better source to feed your corals, so make your fish happier and just feed them more. In the same vein as above, the extra fish waste will feed other things too and can also raise your residual waste product levels like no3 and po4 too high, so there is no free pass to just feed your fish all that you want either without upping

I need to find that balance in my tank of directly feeding coral but keeping Dino’s at a minimum. I’ve removed 99% of my sand and that has helped out considerably but the dang Dino still is dominant is small areas. Silicate dosing does not help me. Keeping my N & P higher does nothing. Dinos are the corona virus of the fish tank.

 

[jda]

The dinos are there because nothing else was on that real estate and they moved in. That is all. Every tank has dinos. In tanks that are established, they cannot gain foothold - even film bacteria and algae are enough.

Some strains can be killed by high waste product levels, but not all no3 into the 30s can do this. It is a dangerous game.

 

[Timfish]

Feeding corals directly can be problematic as there can be huge differences between species not only for type and quantity but there can even be a "goldilocks" response where too little and too much has a negative effect. To reiterate the above fish poop is a good food source for corals as ammonia and urea are preffered forms of nitrogen to nitrates and also has carbonates the corals use. Here's a data bomb if yo want to dig into the subject more.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3758286/
https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.4319/lo.2008.53.6.2702
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0207956
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0188568
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0044848619310282
https://www.academia.edu/1647139/Coral_farming_effects_of_light_water_motion_and_artificial_foods
https://reefs.com/magazine/decrease...nsity-is-largely-explained-by-dic-limitation/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022098111004588
Context Dependant Effects of Nutrient Loading
https://www.researchgate.net/public...nutrient_loading_on_the_coral-algal_mutualism
Fig 3 from this paper

 

[diana2433]

Non photosynthetic stony

Could I have a couple examples (names) of NPS?

 

[randomfishdude]

Could I have a couple examples (names) of NPS?

I don't know many. But I know there is sun coral and some gorgonian.
Along with some sea fans.
That's all I know. All I keep is a gorgonian. I haven't really gotten to the point of nps.