was thinking about coral food

[greenmachine]

One of the reasons to run a scrubber is so you can feed,feed,feed your corals. This got me to thinking about WHAT we are feeding. Most of the foods we feed our corals are never found on any natural reef, think about it...brine shrimp(salty lake beds) , blood worms (fly larva) , oysters (brackish cold water bays) , clams (cold water bays) , pellets (freshwater shrimp meal,wheat meal,bone meal) , WHAT??!!?? This reminds me of when back in the day people would feed crackers and breadcrumbs to tropical fish and wonder why they died within 2 weeks..... any thoughts on this?

[SantaMonica]

Yes feeding is important. Also, the more algae you grow, the more natural food it produces.

[RkyRickstr]

Interesting, but what IS corals natural food?

[SantaMonica]

Bacteria, microbes, detritus, copepods, amphipods, and for gorgs, phyto.

[greenmachine]

i wonder then how we can grow enough "natural" food to feed corals without using much in the way of "store bought"

[SantaMonica]

Cultivate pounds and pounds of algae.

[MorganAtlanta]

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-07/eb/index.php

Good read.


Interesting, but what IS corals natural food?

[Sigmoid]

Actually, I've been thinking a lot about the same, and this was one of the reasons I found out about algae scrubbers. I read about them here, this is exactly the kind of reefkeeping I'm interested in: http://www.chucksaddiction.com/The%20Natural%20Reef%20Aquarium.html

I'm still a pre-beginner with some serious background in freshwater cichlid tanks some years back (in high school, lol), planning my first reef tank (a pico reef, "thanks" to my landlord's strict rules against anything that contains water), and well I'm in this for the science in a large part, I'm thrilled by reef ecology and the various lifeforms and their interactions... so it's a bit disappointing when veteran reefkeepers are being overly loud about never feeding live food, target feeding and so on...
From what I've seen, the mainstream in reefkeeping is essentially the feeding of detritus - dead organic matter. When something doesn't eat detritus, they label it as "hard to keep", and keep trying very hard to teach it to eat detritus (like clown gobies, lol). What makes me rip my hair out is the target feeding videos on youtube, injecting a gigantic mass of what's essentially organic waste into a hapless coral's arms, which maybe eats about 2-5% of all that crap (and that's saying a lot), with the rest drifting away... And I guess they wonder why they need a hyper-mega skimmer to keep the water quality in check!

Anyway... I'm planning on a tiny, tall tank with a refuge and a large overhead-mounted waterfall scrubber, with zoanthids, palythoa, snails and micro brittle stars for cleanup, and a clown goby as the representative of all vertebrates. :) And from the onset I decided that I want to get away with never feeding dead matter. And I'm okay with cultivating phytoplankton in soda bottles... XD (I'm actually looking forward to that, a binocular microscope is definitely on my reef shopping list...)
I guess on a scrubber forum someone has some experience in ecologically sound reefkeeping, like using home cultured live plankton for food, bio load considerations, etc... I'm guessing that live food also counts as bio load as long as it's alive... My ultimate hope is to be able to maintain a level of live food that would allow me to keep some tunicates, I absolutely love those things, but I'm guessing a few gallons won't cut it for them... So first I'd like to keep some zoas and palys super happy, and a clown goby well fed, without having to feed anything dried or frozen. :)

[greenmachine]

morgan: thanks,great read!

[greenmachine]

santa: after reading morgans link it seems that you are right, most everything corals eat is already in the tank we just need to feed that "store bought" stuff to the tank to get enough of the "natural" stuff to grow! wish there was more "natural" stuff to feed in the first place!

[SantaMonica]

Welcome.

Well I pretty happy with my reef pool... no feeding, no waterchanges, and no glass cleaning. Chromis numbers have reduced to two, and they seem to catch pods coming out of the 3 scrubbers on the back side. Coral growth has slowed, probably because of the Ecoxotic lights being not enough compared to my previous MH + Actinic.

[greenmachine]

reef pool? got any pics? what is it? a kidy pool? you dont add CA and ALK ? or just dont add food?

[Sigmoid]

Sounds quite awesome! :) Could you tell us more about this setup? Livestock inventory, what you dose (minerals, "fertilizer", etc.), volume, etc... :D

[SantaMonica]

Yes Cal and Alk with the kalk top off, and mag and str, but that's it. After the last of the growth let's go from the rocks, and after I get a sand sifter that won't jump out, I'll post more stuff about it. Right now it's just leftovers from what I did not kill during my testing in my 90 tall (iron overdose, 92 degrees, N and P additions).