Coral Feeding - what does the latest science say?

[reef__cindyann]

Thank you for posting! Great video!

 

[sde1500]

Most people don't use unltrafiltered seawater in their tanks. Most people (all over the world) - use ASW.

Misspoke, sorry yes ultrafiltered fresh water in the form of RODI plus salt mix to make saltwater, not ultrafiltered seawater. Though in the end I'm sure there is little difference and that most knew what I meant. But thanks for the correction.

 

[klp]

Havent had a chance to watch the video yet but the article was great, thanks for the link. Sure wish I still had access to the Scripp's water

Here is a discussion on Scripp's water. Not being from CA I had never heard of it. Interesting discussion going along with what Paul B has taught for years.

 

[klp]

Here is a discussion on Scripp's water. Not being from CA I had never heard of it. Interesting discussion going along with what Paul B has taught for years.

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1097743

 

[madweazl]

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1097743

I used it from '09-'13 while I lived in San Diego (there is a spigot right on the pier); never had better results. I was transferred to Okinawa after that and collected water off the shore there, also with excellent results. Not an option out here in VA though.

 

[Thales]

Thankyou for this... yet again suspicion and doubts raised over several of the very common products we regularly buy, its interesting that natural, and live food is better in this paper, and potentially how important the bacteria/ virus levels in the unfiltered NSW. I think this summary page is spot on. @Lasse @Paul B @Thales @MnFish1 I’d be interested in your opinions on the video.

Please forgive me, I am on vacation Kiteboarding in Texas. Very tired and happy! So, if I am missing a point, please let me know.

I can't get the first paper from where I am. Can you send me a link to the full paper or send it to me directly? The concepts on the summary page are the same things people have been asking since at least the 1990's. I'll have to read them both before seeing if there is a need to watch the video.

In the second paper they tested reef roids so here is my real question - what kind of research/study/testing is done on processed hobby foods before they are released? I don't think much, because most of the support for those foods in the companies literature are testimonials, and those are anecdote likely colored by purchase bias and post hoc reasoning. What I think is really happening, is people are putting together foods that they think should work, but they aren't really being tested before release. So, maybe they work maybe they don't. I use them sometimes, but that's just because I have some around and I wouldn't rely on them as a primary food source.

In the absence of real information, the kitchen sink approach is kinda all we are left with.

Does that make sense?

 

[action21]

Thanks for video. I’d like to see similar for Triton. Are we buying the hype or is this beneficial for corals

 

[madweazl]

Please forgive me, I am on vacation Kiteboarding in Texas. Very tired and happy! So, if I am missing a point, please let me know.

I can't get the first paper from where I am. Can you send me a link to the full paper or send it to me directly? The concepts on the summary page are the same things people have been asking since at least the 1990's. I'll have to read them both before seeing if there is a need to watch the video.

In the second paper they tested reef roids so here is my real question - what kind of research/study/testing is done on processed hobby foods before they are released? I don't think much, because most of the support for those foods in the companies literature are testimonials, and those are anecdote likely colored by purchase bias and post hoc reasoning. What I think is really happening, is people are putting together foods that they think should work, but they aren't really being tested before release. So, maybe they work maybe they don't. I use them sometimes, but that's just because I have some around and I wouldn't rely on them as a primary food source.

In the absence of real information, the kitchen sink approach is kinda all we are left with.

Does that make sense?

The first paper compared a number of commercially available foods, Reef Roids performed the best for the majority of the experiments. I believe this is why it was chosen for the second paper. The video is simply a summary of the papers.

 

[tenurepro]

I have been culturing copepods and rotifers for over a year. I add them to the tank with phyto direct feed the corals for over a year. I can't say that I have seen amazing growth from the corals, nor have I seen any less growth. Not a scientific study. I think it helps with the bio-diversity of the tank and my tank has low nutrients that is why I do it.

One of the things that the paper says is they had an increase in algae growth in the tanks that they were feeding Reef-Roids and Reef Chili. This is likely due to the increase in nutrients N & P to the tanks from adding these products. Is it possible that the increase in growth of the corals was due to the indirect increase in nutrients not the direct feeding of the corals? From what I have read tanks with higher N and P tend to grow corals faster. As Reef tank keepers we often are trying to balance between too much N and P due to undesirable algae growth and sometimes the loss of coral color.

yes - would be great to do an experiment and compare the corals foods with just dosing nitrates and phosphates (a lot cheaper than coral foods)

 

[tenurepro]

Great video. Thanks!

We've been attempting keeping some NPS soft corals at my work. What I wanted to try was a "diet" containing mostly of phytoplankton. So we've used live Nannochloropsis and Isochryssis, and the concentrate EasyBooster. The first month we also dosed the Cyanobacteria Synechoccocus, which is very common in seawater(unfortunately we don't have a culture going at the moment, but soon hopefully).
Our Scleronephthya didn't do too well in the long run, but IMO most of the Acropora species we had in the same system did very well. Just an observation though.

But I think the smaller plankton/pico plankton like Synechococcus and bacteria are very interesting and could be a great food source for at least some corals. I also think we should consider that corals have different food uptake depending on species. Some are made to trap larger food and some smaller. Some use their polyps, some their mucus. So I don't thing we'll find one product/food source that will benefit all types of corals.

For those interested here are some of the article's I found last year when doing some reaserch:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...s_from_the_Individual_Grazer_to_the_Community
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00338-005-0075-4
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s101520100075
https://www.int-res.com/articles/meps2009/385/m385p065.pdf

There are a couple of good threads here on R2R also on feeding NPS corals. @Jomama is doing some great work experimenting on food for those corals.

thanks for the reading list @Sallstrom

 

[tenurepro]

Thanks for sharing, great info!
Found this article...
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...f-Artemia-nauplii-and-Nori-all_fig6_223431590

oh, nice find... I missed this one... perhaps because I was just searching for science on prepared food, not live food.

 

[tenurepro]

In the second paper they tested reef roids so here is my real question - what kind of research/study/testing is done on processed hobby foods before they are released? I don't think much, because most of the support for those foods in the companies literature are testimonials, and those are anecdote likely colored by purchase bias and post hoc reasoning. What I think is really happening, is people are putting together foods that they think should work, but they aren't really being tested before release. So, maybe they work maybe they don't. I use them sometimes, but that's just because I have some around and I wouldn't rely on them as a primary food source.

I also think that there is no regulation with respect to coral food. This is what motivated my search for data on how well the commercial preparations work

 

[jtl]

I wonder if Ryan at BRS will chime in? I believe his homemade Reef Chili is what started BRS.

 

[Thales]

The first paper compared a number of commercially available foods, Reef Roids performed the best for the majority of the experiments. I believe this is why it was chosen for the second paper. The video is simply a summary of the papers.

That is why I want to read it. Summaries are great, but I would rather watch the movie than read a review.

 

[S-t-r-e-t-c-h]

This was a great video (I subbed!)

One caution I'd raise is that at the end of the day, the studies are only looking at a handful of species of coral. It also seemed like there were different outcomes based on species, so I'm not sure that a black & white "commercial foods are ineffective" is necessarily correct.

Maybe if we're add a qualifier like "for acropora" but even that might be too broad considering that we're talking about a single species of acropora (nevermind whether the milleporas that we have in our tanks are actually acropora millepora).

Does get you thinking though. And makes a good point that the hobby would greatly benefit from more objective data.

thank you!

 

[Purpletank]

Great article and video. I jut started cultivating brine shrimp. Easy to do. The corals love it. Especially the NPS. One of the things I take away from this, is that different corals respond to different conditions in foods. I’m not a diver but I would suspect that we mix corals in our aquariums that would not necessarily grow in the same areas as the ocean. Thus our bioDiversity would need to be greater than even the sea water diversity

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Great article and video. I jut started cultivating brine shrimp. Easy to do. The corals love it. Especially the NPS. One of the things I take away from this, is that different corals respond to different conditions in foods. I’m not a diver but I would suspect that we mix corals in our aquariums that would not necessarily grow in the same areas as the ocean. Thus our bioDiversity would need to be greater than even the sea water diversity

Some NPS soft corals are choosy when it comes to eating. So makes sense on your point of all corals eat different. One thing I wish manufacturers would mention on their food products is if the foods they're processing have been freeze-dried or Frozen, this kills a lot of the beneficial bacteria on and inside the gut of say shrimp, fish,oysters,Etc...
That's why I'm going to buy some cricket flour because it's grinded down finely, lot of protein for my corals and I'll add it to my 32 herbs and spices ingredients for my corals.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Please forgive me, I am on vacation Kiteboarding in Texas. Very tired and happy! So, if I am missing a point, please let me know.

I can't get the first paper from where I am. Can you send me a link to the full paper or send it to me directly? The concepts on the summary page are the same things people have been asking since at least the 1990's. I'll have to read them both before seeing if there is a need to watch the video.

In the second paper they tested reef roids so here is my real question - what kind of research/study/testing is done on processed hobby foods before they are released? I don't think much, because most of the support for those foods in the companies literature are testimonials, and those are anecdote likely colored by purchase bias and post hoc reasoning. What I think is really happening, is people are putting together foods that they think should work, but they aren't really being tested before release. So, maybe they work maybe they don't. I use them sometimes, but that's just because I have some around and I wouldn't rely on them as a primary food source.

In the absence of real information, the kitchen sink approach is kinda all we are left with.

Does that make sense?

The real issue is that we’re left to draw conclusions about the efficacy of feeding ‘coral’ when, in these studies, ‘coral’ is represented by a couple of different types of SPS.

With the understanding that form determines function/function shapes form, we can deduce from the polyp size that those types of corals have a somewhat limited diet (as it pertains to the hobbyist foods offered), whereas corals such as Euphyllia sp. appear to have a much more broad range of food items that can be captured and consumed, from micro all the way up to mysis shrimp (and larger).

To say ‘Our study shows that prepared foods do not contribute significantly to coral nourishment and nutrition’, when based on a limited sample of corals of really just one type, is a little misleading. Plenty of other coral types that we can actually observe them eating the foods offered. Now, if there is some way to consume large amounts of food and not grow, I am going to be a the front of the line to learn how.

My feelings on feeding these foods is that they’re not ‘coral foods’, but rather ‘system foods’ that benefit other organisms we’re displaying as well as all of the other organisms from bacteria on up that make our reefs an ecosystem. Will a particular food benefit every coral directly? Probably not. But the indirect benefits are probably there.

It would be interesting (even if maybe not real strict in its scientific methodology) to see a study where we could actually examine the affects of feeding on actual established reef aquariums.

 

[Frogger]

It would be interesting (even if maybe not real strict in its scientific methodology) to see a study where we could actually examine the affects of feeding on actual established reef aquariums.

We already have thousands of these that have been done in established reef systems for everything under the sun, just read through all the different threads on Reef2Reef.

Problem is without a control of an exact duplicate tank the data we can compile is pretty much useless. Even with a control tank there are too many variables within a tank that can affect growth. Even in my 75 gallon tank I have multiple cuttings of the same coral that are growing at vastly different rates cause by only slight changes in their locations within the tank and even the cuttings themselves.

The work that BRS is doing is the closest thing to true studies, unfortunately BRS does have a vested interest in the outcomes.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

This is likely going to be a controversial topic, so please keep an open mind when you watch the video.

Cheers and happy reefing!

Thanks for the video! Have you tested your tank with Triton's N-DOC. I was quite surprised at how much organic Nitrogen I had vs NO3 when running without filter socks and skimmer. I ended up turning the skimmer back on and running socks.... my corals look better. I need to try another N-DOC test to see if I had way too much organic Nitrogen vs Carbon and Phosphorus. I've been experimenting with the amount of food I feed my tank and trying to find a balance between feeding too much an not feeding enough. Also the types of food I feed. I was dosing amino acids and was possibly driving my organic Nitrogen sky high. I ended up with a Dino outbreak.