Elegance coral

[murjan]

For that matter i have Never fed any of my Frogs, Hammers and Torches... 1 of my Hammers went from 2 heads to 5 in a few months. Frog has split as well.

I have similar experience with LPS, I have had a couple of LPS dominated tanks with a lot of passion to all branching euphyllias I could put my hands on.

I have had months where I was feeding and experimenting with different foods ranging from trendy products to home made stuff, and YEARS where I just never target fed anything and there was at least one year of starvation where I only fed my only clown fish a few micro sized pellets (5-10) each week or 10 days.

So far I found that most LPSs I kept did very well regardless of how I fed them when general conditions were normal and there was nothing wrong with my tanks, however they tend to have different "personalities" depending on how I was feeding them, also feeding helped recover the troubled ones much faster, and i really recommend regular feeding of quality food as soon as possible when you spot something like that.

I have also experienced blooming growth when i was starving the tank for a year and I assumed that was because my tank got cleaner for the lack of feeding and general health is promoted, although I didn't do much water changes.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

All corals need to be feed in order to be healthy, especially LPS. .

I don't agree with that, as others have pointed out.

I've had many LPS grow and thrive for many years without intentionally feeding them. That doesn't include elegance corals, but certainly many others, such as bubble corals, fox corals, frogspawn, galaxea, etc.

 

[Vaughn17]

I didn't mean to imply that every (stoney) coral needs to be spot feed. My point was that symbiotic stoney corals are not completely autotrophic. They are also heterotrophic, hence the polyps and gastrovascular cavity. Corals in our tanks are likely feeding on zooplankton, phytoplankton, bacteria, detritus, dissolved organic matter, etc. without appearing to be eating.

But I still maintain that there are some species of symbiotic corals that need to be feed or they will die.

Don't mean to come off as a know-it-all. I've read many of your articles and posts, Randy, and certainly have a great deal of respect for your knowledge.