Adding yeast to reef roids mix?

[George Villasenor]

Anyone have first hand at feeding yeast to corals, I can't find anything related to this. A local lfs does it and I don't understand why, would yeast be damaging to my small 20 gallon setup?

 

[hijinks7]

yeast is in a lot of fish foods because it helps the food float. So maybe they mix the reef roids up thick and use yeast to help it not settle at the bottom?

 

[Tautog]

Yeast, dry or wet, is a great food for bacteria to bloom. It will reduce Nitrates.
1 pound of dry yeast flushed down a toilet into a cesspool will eat the waste and clean the cesspool for the year.

 

[xiaoxiy]

I've been feeding my tank yeast nightly for the ~1 month. I culture it and mix it with reef chili when I feed my tank. No negative issues with the yeast yet in my tank. I culture the yeast and feed it at the dosages documented in this article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.3538/full. I think the guys at UniqueCorals also feeds their corals yeast as well.

 

[djbetterly]

I've been feeding my tank yeast nightly for the ~1 month. I culture it and mix it with reef chili when I feed my tank. No negative issues with the yeast yet in my tank. I culture the yeast and feed it at the dosages documented in this article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.3538/full. I think the guys at UniqueCorals also feeds their corals yeast as well.

Is the feeding you’re referring to? I couldn’t find where they mentioned dosages though?

Heterotrophic feeding

1.75 grams baker’s yeast, 14 grams sugar and 350 ml reverse osmosis water. This was freshly mixed three times each week in a conical flask, placed on a magnetic stirrer and incubated at 24 º C for 24 hrs prior to use. Solutions older than 72 hrs were discarded.

 

[xiaoxiy]

Is the feeding you’re referring to? I couldn’t find where they mentioned dosages though?

Heterotrophic feeding

1.75 grams baker’s yeast, 14 grams sugar and 350 ml reverse osmosis water. This was freshly mixed three times each week in a conical flask, placed on a magnetic stirrer and incubated at 24 º C for 24 hrs prior to use. Solutions older than 72 hrs were discarded.

I no longer do this because I got lazy. Here's the dosages they fed at: baker's yeast solution, 0.03 ml/L. It's under section 2.9: Heterotrophic Feedings.

 

[Trueruby]

Is the feeding you’re referring to? I couldn’t find where they mentioned dosages though?

Heterotrophic feeding

1.75 grams baker’s yeast, 14 grams sugar and 350 ml reverse osmosis water. This was freshly mixed three times each week in a conical flask, placed on a magnetic stirrer and incubated at 24 º C for 24 hrs prior to use. Solutions older than 72 hrs were discarded.

Hi, have you experienced using the yeast?

 

[elysics]

Reviving this thread because why not, and that's an interesting paper that was posted

I tried this a while ago, but didn't repeat it, probably because I got side tracked by life and forgot about it. so here's a repetition that if it goes well particularly regarding growth of one of my sponges that I read somewhere supposedly benefits from this.

I didn't culture the yeast, just dissolved a pinky nail sized chunk of fresh baking yeast into tank water and then dumped it into the ~13g tank and took photos after 0, 34, 64 and 124 minutes. As far as I can tell all sps loved it, my flame scallop looked a bit more plump and healthy than usual lately, a Funghia really hated it in the beginning, and two F. paraancora were slightly less plump than usual, though I don't know whether to interpret that as being ticked off or as a feeding response. The 2 hours mentioned in the paper for the tank to clear the food are spot on. I left the skimmer on during this time mostly to precautiously prevent o2 depletion, but it didn't produce any skimmate during this time and in the past I tried the same with the skimmer turned off

Before feeding, yeast solution in the top right:

0 minutes:

34 minutes:

64 minutes:

124 minutes,cleared:

Yes it looks scary and might be a bit overkill, but I neglected the tank feeding wise recently so I figured I'd give it a boost again and see what happens

 

[AlgaeBarn]

Thanks for sharing! How often do you plan to do it?

 

[elysics]

Thanks for sharing! How often do you plan to do it?

Idk yet, depends on how it impacts phosphate and nitrate and whether tiny chunks dropped by an autofeeder will dissolve properly, if it has to be done by hand, probably every 3-7 days

 

[AlgaeBarn]

Nice. We will keep an eye out for your updates

 

[xiaoxiy]

Wow! What an old thread.

If you're interested in hetertrophic feedings for acropora, there's good evidence for baby brine shrimp too. I can dig up some of the articles.

 

[xiaoxiy]

Found some of my older posts:

This article shows that Acropora and Pocillopora definitely capture Artemia Nuaplii as a food source.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03946975.2015.1119006

Here’s a paper looking at optimal prey densities. It’s unfortunately behind a pay/request wall. Sometimes authors will send you the article if you contact them.

Optimizing heterotrophic feeding rates of three commercially important scleractinian corals | Request PDF

Request PDF | Optimizing heterotrophic feeding rates of three commercially important scleractinian corals | Heterotrophy plays an important role in improving coral growth rate in aquaculture. While a lack of sufficient food will reduce growth and delay... | Find, read and cite all the research...

www.researchgate.net

This study looked at five different dietary regimens on Millepora and Pocillopora. They found that at least for pocillopora, Artemia seemed to lead to higher growth rates. I wonder if the study was just too underpowered to detect statistically significant differences for Artemia treatment for millepora, as the graphs suggest that Artemia feeding yields more growth than filtered sea water. What’s interesting is how disappointed Reef Roids and the “novel, micro bound diet” performed.

Comparing the capacity of five different dietary treatments to optimise growth and nutritional composition in two scleractinian corals

Developing an optimal heterotrophic feeding regime has the potential to improve captive coral growth and health. This study evaluated the efficacy of three exogenous diets: Artemia nauplii (ART), a commercially available coral diet (Reef Roids) (RR), and a novel, micro-bound diet (ATF), against...

journals.plos.org

Here’s an article that looked at Artemia feeding vs no feeding with Stylophora. Again the fed corals did better.

Interactions between zooplankton feeding, photosynthesis and skeletal growth in the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata | Journal of Experimental Biology | The Company of Biologists

jeb.biologists.org

Here’s an article that looked at Artemia feeding vs not feeding in Pocillopora. Again, the fed corals did better.

Effects of feeding on the physiological performance of the stony coral Pocillopora acuta - Scientific Reports

Reef-building corals rely on both heterotrophy and endosymbiotic dinoflagellate autotrophy to meet their metabolic needs. Those looking to culture these organisms for scientific or industrial purposes must therefore consider both feeding regimes and the light environment. Herein the effects of...

www.nature.com

In brief, the authors found the highest growth rates across three acropora species (Acropora loripes, Acropora millepora, and Acropora tenuis) with a Isochrysis galbana diet. Unfortunately they did not have an Artemia Nauplii condition in the experiment.

I think the second important take away from this study is that it's really hard to replicate food with a synthetic diet (think reef roids and misc).

Elucidating an optimal diet for captive Acropora corals

Developing an optimal heterotrophic feeding regime has the potential to improve the growth and overall health of captive corals. This study evaluated …

www.sciencedirect.com

 

[drawman]

@elysics and @xiaoxiy any updates on this?

 

[xiaoxiy]

@elysics and @xiaoxiy any updates on this?

I haven't fed yeast in ages; as time has progressed, my acros seem to just do best with good ol' elevated PO4, NO3 and fish poo. Maybe Elysics has an update.

 

[drawman]

I haven't fed yeast in ages; as time has progressed, my acros seem to just do best with good ol' elevated PO4, NO3 and fish poo. Maybe Elysics has an update.

Hopefully he will chime in. I run a little lighter fish load so I may give it a try.

 

[elysics]

I stopped after a while, i frankly don't remember exactly why i think it was a combination of laziness and some corals seeming not to like it but i don't remember exactly, maybe I'll try again

 

[SlugSnorter]

Yeast, dry or wet, is a great food for bacteria to bloom. It will reduce Nitrates.
1 pound of dry yeast flushed down a toilet into a cesspool will eat the waste and clean the cesspool for the year.

I think the yeast will be killed off by the salinity, the bacteria might eat it though yeah.

whoops did not realize this was a zombie thread

 

[elysics]

So i just started again since being reminded of this thread, this time with packaged dry yeast, enough to cover the surface in a specimen cup full of tank water, dosed after letting it soak for a while daily to the 55l tank. Probably less concentrated than the old picture in this thread, closer to the picture for the 34 minute mark.

My big sponge looks healthier and my Dendrophyllia and Tunicates seems to be open more consistently.

I am a bad experimenter though. Didn't take baseline nutrient measurements and was starting to fall behind on osing phytoplankton in the last few weekss which might explain the declining health of those animals that has now stopped again. But that would be nice information in itself, if true.