No, I haven't thought of a recipe, but IMO, aspartic and glutamic acids might be most useful for corals.
I mention their use here:
Aquarium Chemistry: The Chemical and Biochemical Mechanisms of Calcification ? Advanced Aquarist | Aquarist Magazine and Blog
from it:
The Role of Organics
Organic molecules are known to play a substantial role in the formation of calcium carbonate in many organisms, including abalone shells and other mollusk shells. These materials can be proteins, glycoproteins, mucopolysaccharides, and phospholipids (and likely others that have not yet been identified). They help to induce the nucleation and growth of aragonite and are often referred to as the "organic matrix" because much of skeleton of corals is comprised of these organic materials.
In the case of corals, we have relatively little information about exactly what these organic materials are doing. The structures of some of these proteins contain an unusually large number of aspartic acid residues. These amino acids are capable of binding to calcium, but whether that is a critical function or not has not been established. Here is some speculation about what these organics might be doing with respect to calcification:
1. They may help control the concentration of free calcium in the ECF, and thereby help control the rate of precipitation of CaCO3.
2. They may control the location of crystal growth by binding free calcium and ferrying it to the location where the coral wants precipitation to take place.
3. They may bind to the aragonite crystal face and thereby control the rate of precipitation.
4. They may bind to the aragonite crystal face and thereby prevent precipitation in places where the coral does not want the skeleton to grow.
5. They may bind to the aragonite crystal face and thereby inhibit binding of magnesium, phosphate, or other ions that are known to inhibit the growth of calcium carbonate crystals.
Regardless of the mechanisms involved, the need for these organics in calcification is easily verified. Allemand et al have studied the role of such materials in Stylophora pistillata. Interestingly, they find that inhibitors of protein synthesis reduce the rate of calcification considerably. For example, reducing protein synthesis by 60-85% reduced calcification by 50%. A similar result was found by inhibiting glycoprotein synthesis. These results did not come about because of reduced metabolism, but rather by specific effects of reduced protein and glycoprotein synthesis. The most important conclusion in their paper may be that the rate of skeletogenesis may be more limited by the rate of biosynthesis and exocytosis of organic matrix proteins rather than by calcium deposition.
Interestingly, the apparently large need for a particular amino acid (aspartic acid) to synthesize these proteins is satisfied by external sources, not by either the coral itself or the zooxanthellae. For this reason, it might be interesting to see what added aspartic acid does to calcification rates in reef tanks.
