Feeding tips

[youngy]

How do you guys feed your corals? Drops out the bottle, or turkey baste it into tank? And do you turn pumps off for a period?

Cheers

[Cliff]

When I feed my corals, I will turn off the power heads and only leave the return pump form the sump running. Once they have the food well inside their mouth, I will turn the powerheads back on

When I feed them shrimp, I will take a long pare of tweezers and drop the shrimp righ on the mouth. That can be kind of a messy way to feed

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Latley I've been feeding them marine pellets. I'll use a long (36" to 40") pc of 1/2" PVC pipe. I will lower one end into the tank and hold the one end 1/4" about the mouth and drop in a few pellet from the other end of the pipe. I find this works great as the pellets drop right on the mouth, and the fish don't see the food. I've starting feeding like this and I like it better than trying to feed shrimp.

I will feed my corals pellets once a week

I also put some liquid coral food in the water once a week as well. I just put it in the tank leaving all power heads on

Some people don't feed there corals at all and they do just fine. I like to feed mine so the grow faster

[labnjab]

the only coral we feed is our sun coral and thats only because its non photosynthetic. i just squirt a little mysis at it every few days.

Another thing you can do is use a turkey baster to blow of your rocks every few days. coral and fish love the crud that comes off them

[kaybee]

I no longer intentionally feed my corals (some manage to incidently capture the pellets I feed my fish) but I used to on a regular basis (several times a week for the first 2 or 3 years).

Different corals consume different things. I'd target feed the LPS corals mysis shrimp using tweezers, and provide my soft corals and smaller polyped stony corals smaller foods such as cyclopeeze, Reef Roids and even microscopic oyster eggs (mixed with water and either broadcast into the water column or spot fed with an eye dropper).

I'd feed them when the lights were out (when most of the feeder tentacles were extended; the fish would hide at night and couldn't intercept the food). I'd keep the circulation of for maybe 45-60min because some corals couldn't keep hold of the food when the circulation was on.

[youngy]

Whats the other tests you need to do for when you have corals?

[Cliff]

Other the 5 standard ones (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, PH, and salinity), I test for calcium, and alkalinity. As I am very disciplined about doing a 10% weekly water change (with a reef salt) and I only have a moderate stocking of corals, I don’t test or dose for any other trace elements.

Just as a warning about dosing calcium and alkalinity, do not assume the dosing instructions on the bottles will be the correct amount for your tank. Those are only guidelines. Every tank is different.

If you start dosing, I would suggest starting off at 1/8 to ¼ of the recommended amount followed by testing to see how much that impacted your parameters

I’m not dosing even close to the suggestion amount on the bottle (much much lower in fact) and my parameters stay right where I want them

[labnjab]

Magnesium is another important one, It needs to be between 1200 and 1400 and has a direct impact on calcium and alk levels. If you magnesium is low you'll have a hard time keeping alkalinity up.