New to feeding Coral Question..

[jk1151]

Hello - My tank has been up and running for 4 months and I finally bought my first Corals from WWC (love working with them by the way!). I bought 1 Rock Flower Anenome and 16 coral frags mostly LPS a couple softies and 1 SPS.

I was just wondering if I should start feeding them or if the weekly water changes will be enough? They are all small frags around 1-1.5" a piece so I figured they wouldn't be that demanding at this point but I wanted to make sure I do it right also as this is my first purchase and it was expensive! I love the stuff I got and am so nervous! My main tank has been very stable thus far but they are in a smaller QT tank right now in case of fish pests or coral pests. QT tank has flow and good lights on it. It is only 10 gallons so I do 2 water changes a week about and can adjust that as necessary.

Anyways, I was just wondering everyone's thoughts on if I should start feeding or just give them time and see how they do with the water changes since they are just frags at this point.

Thanks!

 

[jk1151]

Hello - My tank has been up and running for 4 months and I finally bought my first Corals from WWC (love working with them by the way!). I bought 1 Rock Flower Anenome and 16 coral frags mostly LPS a couple softies and 1 SPS.

I was just wondering if I should start feeding them or if the weekly water changes will be enough? They are all small frags around 1-1.5" a piece so I figured they wouldn't be that demanding at this point but I wanted to make sure I do it right also as this is my first purchase and it was expensive! I love the stuff I got and am so nervous! My main tank has been very stable thus far but they are in a smaller QT tank right now in case of fish pests or coral pests. QT tank has flow and good lights on it. It is only 10 gallons so I do 2 water changes a week about and can adjust that as necessary.

Anyways, I was just wondering everyone's thoughts on if I should start feeding or just give them time and see how they do with the water changes since they are just frags at this point.

Thanks!

Oops - to correct myself I also have an encrusting Monti and a plating Monti if that makes any difference to your answers.

 

[Nanorock1970]

Oops - to correct myself I also have an encrusting Monti and a plating Monti if that makes any difference to your answers.

Watching....What do you all say?

 

[klimfish]

It really depends on the LPS you got. Acans, Duncans, etc will enjoy small pieces of meaty foods like mysis shrimp. Other LPS exhibit almost no feeding response at all.

 

[jk1151]

OK thanks! I have a hammer coral, different zoanthids, a leather, mushroom, encrusting Monti, plating Monti, birds nest, anthelia, cyphastrea, pipe organ, and a favor.

 

[AcroNem]

Every single coral will benefit from supplemental feedings. Every polyp has a mouth, so every polyp wants to eat. A good mix of phytoplankton species (The reef blend from brine shrimp direct is awesome) will do a lot of good in a reef, as there is plenty of research into herbivory in corals with feeding on phytoplankton. Other small particle foods in the 50-200micron range are good too. Reef roids, golden Pearl's etc. Also rotifers (frozen, dried), copepods, roe, brine shrimp nauplii, will all be used by one coral or another and it sounds like you have a good mix of corals to feed. I feed my corals usually every other day in a mixed reef, but do a lot with non photosynthetic species that require food either several times per day or systems that are fed every hour. So every coral is different. Your system will do just fine with supplemental feedings a couple/a few times per week.