Feeding corals

[Anonymous]

Ok here is my cherry question for the week. I hear reference to feeding corals a lot. I have heard that you need to hand feed certain corals. So what is the skinny on it, which ones need hand feeding which ones will do fine with no targeted feeding etc? Is there a site that has this info or a link?

 

[johnnjen]

I am very new but I fed my bubble coral, and it was happy about it 2nd time it got a little upset but now its all better

 

[Bojangles]

The only coral that I target feed is my sun coral, which only opens at night. I tried to do it with a surrenge without much luck. I was also feeding cyclopeeze, which was working but eh...

About a month ago I got a turkey baster from the 1$ store and a 59 cent 2 liter, cut the bottom off and cleaned it out. What I do, not that its the "right" or perfect way, is this.

I put the bottle over the coral vertically, just like you're going to set it on a table except the bottom is cut out to accept the coral. Use the baster and squirt the food, in this case brine or mysis (frozen), into the origional opening. When you do this it cuts the flow so the food isn't floating out of reach and yet keeps it moving inside the bottle.

I've heard of people feeding mushrooms and ricordia frozen daphnia and I've heard of people target feeding xenia with plankton. I say just drop some Phytoplankton in there once or twice a week and call it good.

 

[dodo99]

What type of coral do you wish to feed?

 

[SnowManSnow]

As has been stated here, some require feeding, and some don't. Personally, I feed almost all of my corals... because it's fun! As a GENERAL rule of thumb the more the corals depend on light for photosynthesis the less meaty food they require. That being said, if you have a coral and it begins to bleach for whatever reason... you should probably feed it more regularly to make up for the lost zooalgae (the cause of the bleached look).

I forget how to spell the REAL name so I call it zooalgae. It's the stuff that makes your corals look brightly colored. When you look at a clam mantle you'll notice it is duller if you look strait on. But, if you look at it from the top youll see the zooalgae... thats what makes things pretty!!! It's a symboint algae that light using corals use for food. In return the algae gets to use coral as surface area to "sun" itself. When the zooalgae is killed or expelled from the coral the coral appears bleached. Because the coral has lost a MAJOR help for it's nutrition we have to help them along untill the zooalgae can be repopulated.

Don't know why I launched into that! Not even sure I helped at all haha.

Have a good one!

B.

 

[SnowManSnow]

oh.. to answer your question, you need to research each coral and see if it requires extra feeding

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

Ranger, if you don't have this book yet, buy it. It's an excellent reference book on the care requirements of the majority of the corals sold.

 

[Anonymous]

Ranger, if you don't have this book yet, buy it. It's an excellent reference book on the care requirements of the majority of the corals sold.

So true it needed repeating