Corals by food group?

[Big Mistake]

While it is claimed that photosynthetic corals can derive 80% of their nutrition from their zooxanthellae, is there a document that sorts corals by their natural and the artificial snack preference?

Which want phytoplankton, which want fish feces, which will eat reef-roids and small foods, and ones that want big bites, and those that are picky eaters?

While my dataset is so small to be more a belief, one of my corals appeared to grow once copepods and phytoplankton dosing began.

Utterly ignored reef-roids.

I would claim green star polyps love reef-roids. Or just irritated? They respond even to broadcast feeding.

Some corals might just find them irritating.

Even the different zoas seem to have a different response to reef-roids.

I assume even similar corals might have a significant difference in food choices, like any diverse family.

Hammer won't even consume little bites of shrimp (wants something meaty from Shake Shack?)

Fish food? Food fish?

-Big Mistake

 

[F i s h y]

Interesting thought process. I think there are def some preferences based on the type of coral, polyp size, age even may play into it. This would be a big task... since a single type of coral may like multiple types of foods.

 

[KrisReef]

Yes.
It's a taste buds thing.
Young corals won't eat spinach but will devour a cocopod.

I think they prefer what provides them with the most valuable nutrients and that is likely to change over time and season. At Christmas they want candy apples but generally they get gut loaded with seasonal ham and fruit cake.

But when short of their natural requirement, they must suffer. I agree that natural live foods and sunlight are what they want and those are not really replaced all that well with freeze dried plankton or artificial spectrums and electrically spawned photons in a dim array.

Slowly the hobby expands as we learn to mimic the creation in our home aquaria.
Soli deo gloria

80% of nutritional requirements isn't going to make anything alive.
Best source on creation is
The Bible.
It is kind of short on coral nutrition. Biologists are working on that.

There is probably a lot of diversity among coral nutritional requirements buts someone else said that they have a mouth for a reason and getting the right things for these creatures to snack on is still being investigated. Your observations may help move us all closer to understanding how to keep our coral happy. It is a good thing to think about.