Home blended coral food, (used to be $5)

[Floyd R Turbo]

I guess my understanding was that this food was a coral only food. So should you be feeding that much of it to your tank when you don't really have that many corals?

[SantaMonica]

I cube is 3 ml, not much for one day, but a lot for one dosing. Try doing 1/3 at a time.

[joelespinoza]

I dose in about 1/3-1/4 increments throughout the day.

I was just looking for reasonably cheap food to feed the tank, and the fish do eat it too.

[joelespinoza]

Maybe I should just toss all these guys in the blender and call it frozen food:

(Click to watch the video)

[CHOMPERS]

Here's my recipe for oyster based coral food:

one cup fresh, frozen, or canned oysters (check for preservatives)
half cup of frozen copepods, cyclopeeze, mysis, etc. (optional)
four cups cold RODI water
1/2 teaspoon of Sodium Ascorbate (vitamin C) (reef safe preservative)
1/4 teaspoon of Sodium Alginate

and

one Goodwill blender

The Goodwill blender is so you don't have to buy forgiveness from your significant other (for burning up/stinking up the one in the kitchen). By the way, when you are blending this up, it will smell like oysters. To the rest of the family, it will stink like hell. I have learned that it is best to keep the "bait blender" in the garage and blend up the coral food outside.

So far, I have found three sources of oysters. Winn Dixie's seafood counter has fresh live oysters when in season for six dollars for a dozen oysters. Walmart has frozen farm grown oysters for eight dollars per pint. Walmart also has Bumble Bee canned oysters with no preservatives (8 oz. /one cup) (don't remember the price). Any of these will do just fine.

The Sodium Ascorbate will keep the food fresh in the refrigerator for up to three weeks. My brother threw it away at three weeks, and so ending the experiment...

[SantaMonica]

Current:

30 ml dried copepods ($)
10 ml dried phyto ($$)
10 ml dried arctipods ($$)
10 ml dried rotifers ($$)
1/2 teaspoon sodium alginate powder ($)
16 ounces water

Blend, refrigerate overnight, blend again, and put in chiller

I get the pods from AquacultureNurseryFarms.com, and the alginate from WillPowder.com/sodiumAlginate.html (alginate is from algae). I've found the big advantage of powdered foods compared to liquid foods is that it almost does not smell at all (only a bit like hay), and it does not seem to ever go bad in the chiller, even after 6 weeks. Just have to stir it every few days.

[BearHill]

Note 2: Real reefs have been measured to be fed 1 pound of food particles per day, per cubic meter (264 gal). This would be 144 cubes of food per day, or:

65 cubes in a 120 gal
49 cubes in a 90 gal
30 cubes in a 55 gal
22 cubes in a 40 gal
13 cubes in a 24 gal nano
6 cubes in a 12 gal nano

HOLY COW!! does anyone really feed this much? This I have to know!

[Floyd R Turbo]

Pics of your tank??