Frozen phyto as coral food?

[kimros1986]

I want to make frozen cubes with coral food. I plan to have reef roids, reef blizzard and some other coral food from aquaforest in the mix.
I first thought of just having newly mixed salt water as fluid.
But I realised that I have some phyto culture on bottle that might serve as a better fluid base based on the purpose.

But, is phyto still beneficial to corals if frozen and then melted again? Or will that be wasting good phyto culture.

Same question goes with acropower? Could I use that in the mix or would the amino acids and other ingredients be wasted if frozen?

The plan is to just shut off return pump and dump a cube in the aquarium, and let it melt into the water column. Saw an episode from reefbuilders about this and thought it seemed practical

 

[CuzzA]

I believe broadcast feeding like that is a waste of time and resource. Target feeding is by far the most effective. Got LPS? Put food in their mouth and they will grow exponentially faster. I like to make a reef roids slurry and use a pipette and drop the slurry in their mouth with the flow off. Bigger coral mouths get chunks of meat. Do that once or twice a week and you'll be amazed at the growth. The only thing I broadcast feed is fish food and phyto. Freezing phyto would probably damage the cell structure, but I can't say whether or not it wouldn't still be a viable food source for filter feeders.

Broadcast feeding coral food will make your tank dirtier and much of it will just get filtered out when the system is turned back on.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

When phyto is frozen it usually breaks the cells apart leaving junk. Not sure if its nutritious or not but I would use fresh.

 

[kimros1986]

I believe broadcast feeding like that is a waste of time and resource. Target feeding is by far the most effective. Got LPS? Put food in their mouth and they will grow exponentially faster. I like to make a reef roids slurry and use a pipette and drop the slurry in their mouth with the flow off. Bigger coral mouths get chunks of meat. Do that once or twice a week and you'll be amazed at the growth. The only thing I broadcast feed is fish food and phyto. Freezing phyto would probably damage the cell structure, but I can't say whether or not it wouldn't still be a viable food source for filter feeders.

Broadcast feeding coral food will make your tank dirtier and much of it will just get filtered out when the system is turned back on.

I've read broadcast feeding is maybe not as effective as target feeding, but it still seems to be working. I still do target feeding, but with family and life in general I don't always have that time.

On the other hand I have quite heavy filtration and my nutrients in check (and mastertronic as well).

I have mainly sps.

But it still sounds like a bad idea to freeze and defrost phyto, so I will just use salt water instead

 

[kimros1986]

When phyto is frozen it usually breaks the cells apart leaving junk. Not sure if its nutritious or not but I would use fresh.

OK cheers. Sounds like salt water is the way to go