Am I feeding my LPS enough?

[jezzeaepi]

How often do you guys feed your LPS, how much do you feed them, and do you shut off all your pumps or just let your flow take care of it?

Right now for LPS I have a trachy, candy cane, blasto merletti's, frogspawn, tubinaria peltata, an acan lord, and a bunch of hitchiking tubastrea. What I have been doing lately is adding 1 cube of frozen food every other day to my 40~ gal tank. I have not been target feeding, I just let the flow bring food to the corals. I feed either frozen mysis or "Rods Reef food". I feel like my growth could be better though.

Target feeding seems like a better approach but I have run in to several problems with that avenue. First off, when I shut off my pumps, my PH starts changing rapidly. Secondly, once the corals have succesfully grabbed their food, my shrimp and mini-brittle stars end up stealing most of it. Atleast when the pumps are on, the brittles cant find the food as well, and the shrimp are too busy trying to grab things flying through the water.

Do any of you feed differently? Should I be feeding more or less based on my tank volume/corals?

Peace

 

[rocket]

I want to follow along on this thread...

 

[lavenderfish]

I'm curious myself about feeding LPS. My shrimp will steal dinner out coral mouths if I don't bat at them with the baster.

 

[jezzeaepi]

Im guessing by the lack of response, this is as much of an enigma to others as it is to me?

Given the amount of time we devote to finding the correct lighting for SPS(who rely mostly on light), you would think there would be more info on what food LPS require(who rely a lot more on food).

 

[Jan]

I'm wondering about the flow question too. I've been feeding my fish every day with the pumps running...seems to give everyone a bit of exercise. My greenstar polyps is growing like gangbusters, same with the xenia. Nothing else seems to be growing though (candy cane, palys, ricordia, mushrooms...)

 

[Brenden]

In my experience feeding LPS is not necessary. I have experimented with this a little. I have gone without feeding them for over a year with no ill effects. They only get the scraps from feeding. However feeding them will increase their growth. I have started feeding mine some lately (this month)but only about once a week. I never turn the circulation pumps off when I feed. I only turn off the return pump because I do not want food going into the sump. You need to feed the candy canes at night if you want they to eat good.

 

[Cwazy Clown]

i agree with brenden..theres no point to feed them...when you feed fish, some food gets to them eitherway...

i think the only reason people feed LPS is becuse they have big mouths and when ppl see that, they have that instinct to feed the mouth. iunno that is just how i preceive it.

 

[jezzeaepi]

"i agree with brenden..theres no point to feed them...when you feed fish, some food gets to them eitherway..."

There is certainly a point to feeding them if you want to see them grow well. Anyone whos experimented with target feeding their candy cane can atest to that. There are also numerous publications out there that talk about how all of a corals energy needs cannot be met by sunlight alone. LPS have larger portion of their energy that must be met with some sort of feeding, be it via mucus net, direct abosorption, or prey capture. The AMOUNT of feeding that is needed isnt really talked about and thats what I am trying to get at here.

Brenden-
I have a few questions about your year with no feeding.
Did you have a heavy fish load?
Did they continue to grow and maintain good color?
What kind of lps?


Peace

 

[Brenden]

Did you have a heavy fish load?

It was a 525gal system with a moderate fish load. I did not target feed them however there was significant food it the water column at feeding time. They got scrapes. Cyclopeeze was in accational feedings and if you have ever used it you know it circulates a while before the fish etc pick it from the water column. I only feed every other or somethmes every third day. They got cyclopeeze prob 2 times a month.

Did they continue to grow and maintain good color?

Color was great. Growth was slow except for one green variety of candy cane that grew like crazy. Zoanthids also had good growth.

What kind of lps?

Tooth/galaxea, brain (favites, platygyra,Trachyphyllia), hammer, frogspawn, turbinaria cup, short tentacle plate, candy canes (mutiple varieties). I did have a tube coral that I kept in that tank. It has to be target feed. I know I am missing some but you get the idea.

If you want growth then feed them. If you are out of room then let them eat scraps.

 

[BIG-G]

I built an acrylic box with a hole in the top just big enough to squirt some food in. Place the box over my coral that i want to target and squirt the food in through the hole. this keeps my shrimp and brittle stars away while the coral feeds , after a few min i just take the box off move to the next coral and repeat. usually i just target feed a different coral each day or every other day.

 

[returnofsid]

I target feed most of my LPS in the evenings, a little bit after the daylight bulbs are turned off. That's when I notice their polyps start to extend in search of food. I usually feed BBS. I also feed some formula 1 frozen. I use a turkey baster and feed very slowly so as not to shoot a bunch of food into the current to just get swept away. I also try and keep the turkey baster "upstream" so if the current does grab the food, it pushes it past the coral. I have noticed more growth and increased color from my Candy Cane with feedings. I haven't really noticed any difference with my Frogspawn. I do notice that my Torch Coral seems able to eat much larger bits of food. (When I say larger, I'm talking about the size of mysid shrimp) My Bubble Coral also seems able to eat the larger bits. I also feed Zoanthids and seem to get a feeding reaction from them...but not sure if it's feeding or just irritated...lol. I also feed my Hairy Mushrooms and they totally close up around the food. I've target fed my Toadstools but don't know if they're getting any benefit or not.

As was stated above, I don't think it's required to feed any corals...other than NON photosynthetic corals (Corals that don't have the Zoanthellae so rely on feeding for life.) However, I'm also not convinced that feeding ISN'T beneficial.