reef fish + coral food/feeding suggestions

[mercedes]

hi all!

looking for some advise on fish + coral food/feeding. what food have you found that has helped your sps/lps coral grow like crazy? what food would you recommend for fish + crustaceans? i know the fish + crustaceans are supposed to scavenge, but whenever we feed the coral, the fish + shrimp in our tank pester the coral for scraps so we end up having to feed them first so they leave the coral alone. is there such thing as an all in one food cube that you drop into the tank that will satisfy all the inhabitants the tank? i was thinking about defrosting mysis shrimp + cyclops + ova then re-freezing them into combined cubes.

we've tried...

• hikari bloodworms (our mandarins would only eat bloodworms)
• hikari mysis shrimp (mainly for the sun coral we recently sold, but also fed them to blastos + duncans)
• coral-frenzy
  
  
• omega one shrimp pellets (for the purple lobster)
  
  
• nutramar ova
  
  
• h2o freshwater cyclops (these guys aren't red like the cyclopeeze ones. found these guys to be kind of clumpy, which is great for the fish, but not so great for the coral)
  
  

does anyone wants to trade spoonfuls of reef-chili for some coral-frenzy? also, looking to try a sample of cyclopeeze. i've got the h20 freshwater cyclops cubes or nutramar ova cut up into chunks if you want to do a trade. let me know! thanks in advance for your input!

 

[DonW]

Just feed your fish they will feed everything else.
Don

 

[jezzeaepi]

I tend to stay away from dry products like reef chili and coral frenzy because most of it ends up polluting your tank, not feeding it. Make sure your feeding your fish a balanced diet, and that should filter down to your corals like don said. If you have some LPS your trying to target feed, I am fond of mysis shrimp and rods reef food.

 

[apollothesun]

for corals get reef nutrition oysterfeast and rotifeast. i swear this stuff makes your corals color pop!

 

[alki]

Dont know enough about all the kinds of food, except that thawing and refreezing is a bad idea.


I think

 

[returnofsid]

I feed Coral Frenzy and frozen Cyclopeeze. All of my corals respond the most to the frozen Cyclopeeze and they seem to LOVE IT!! Here's a thread with some pictures I took shortly after feeding, to show polyp extension.
http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40406

 

[Chichas01]

I bought a bunch of frozen foods for each the things I'm trying to feed and then mixed them all in a food processor. Rinse the mush in RO/DI through one of those fine mesh steel coffee strainers to get rid of any gel binders in the food, pour mix into a plastic sandwich bag and lay it flat in the freezer until frozen.
In my batch I used Formula 1 & 2, cyclops, krill, artemia, and mysis. This has worked well for me.

 

[jezzeaepi]

Just because there is polyp extension, doesn't mean the coral is eating the food. They are probably trying to get some of the extra bacteria that is floating around that results from dumping a bunch of food in. A vast majority of the food is simply being blown around the tank, not being eaten, which contributes to water pollution.

 

[mercedes]

I feed Coral Frenzy and frozen Cyclopeeze. All of my corals respond the most to the frozen Cyclopeeze and they seem to LOVE IT!! Here's a thread with some pictures I took shortly after feeding, to show polyp extension.
http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40406

those are awesome pix returnofsid! that's the reason why i want to try cyclopeeze. we screwed up and picked up the wrong one. grr! i dont really see any difference in polyp extension when we drop-in the h2o cyclops cubes in the tank. we try not to use coral frenzy anymore b/c we were advised that it raised phosphate levels + were battling a bryopsis outbreak at the time.

 

[jag3534]

We use the oyster feast, then target feed w/ ocean nutrition in red and green (??), ugh, they don't say anything on the package.... about once or twice a week. our caulatrea polyps out like crazy for the oyster feast. We feed the fish formula one and two, and then diff frozen foods everyday. Everybody seems to do well.

 

[returnofsid]

jezzeaepi, I feed a tiny amount about twice a week. I can actually watch the corals eating, with a magnifying glass. It's pretty cool to watch. I don't over-feed to the extent that it would cause a negative impact on water quality. I believe the coral growth in my tank will speak to that issue, all on it's own. I've also noticed a positive increase in growth rate and color, since starting a feeding regiment. It's well known that corals don't derive all of their nutrients from lights and benefit from feeding, otherwise, they wouldn't have a biological feeding mechanism. Yes, they get fed from fish and other nutrients in the water column. But I also believe, and have read (from authorities on the subject) that they benefit from being fed.

 

[brandyrb]

I feed mysis shrimp, frozen cyclopeze and frozen rotifers.

 

[jezzeaepi]

Here is what Calfo has to say about the dry coral food products:
http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8853

 

[returnofsid]

He's actually talking, specifically, about Reef Chili, not dry coral food products in general. I do agree that most dry products are worthless, but, in that same thread, Calfo goes on to explain how you can tell if your corals are actually eating the food or being irritated. I think Calfo's mainly complaining with some of the claims that Reef Chili makes on their packaging. I totally agree with him. If you read his book Coral Propagation, you'll fine more of his thoughts on feeding corals.

I do feel that the frozen cyclopeze are much healthier for the corals, and more likely to be consumed, than most dry products.

 

[jezzeaepi]

If you look at the ingredients of both reef chili and coral frenzy, you will see that they are almost exactly the same. Frozen food is much much better then freeze dried, which gets back to my original point of the dired food being mostly pollution.

 

[DonW]

The trace amounts of sugar is probably causing the polyp extension.

Don