So as of right now, I feed my corals and fish Rod's about 2 days a week, sometimes 3, and Red Sea A + B along with phytoplankton about every other day.
Should I be adding in something else or substitute?
I use to use Reef Roids, but noticed phosphates and algae problems with that. I just want the most variety for the corals so they're getting everything they need. I mostly keep soft corals and LPS.
Coral diet is one of the absolute most important things to get right when starting in the hobby. You can always tell the finesse of one’s marine husbandry by the size of their coral’s poop.
That said, the firmer the stool, the better the health and vitality of the corals, so it’s important to get nutrition right.
What you keep dictates what you feed but the one thing in common is of course a balanced diet.
I maintain an all lps tank with many lobos, scolys, trachys, wellsos, bowerbankis, wilsonis, favias, acans, blastos, pectinia, echinata, gonis, etc, about 70 or so at this point. They eat far more than my fish do.
My go to is coral frenzy .5mm pellets. I feed pellets to any corals that accept it and essentially feed them until they can’t digest anymore. For example, I will feed each favia about 5 pellets per head. My trachy gets about 40 pellets (he eats everything including a couple hermits and other corals). The reason I utilize pellets over reef roids is I’ve noticed that corals cannot maintain a good grasp on the small granules and reef roids, so they only actually eat about 20-30%. With pellets, you ensure the corals receive 80%+ of the food you feed without making a mess as well. I noticed a substantial increase in growth after shifting to pellet feeding.
Now, I obviously mix the pellets in with reef roids and another custom made rotifer blend I whip up every week to ensure they aren’t deficient in anything.
Smaller corals: chalices, zoas, leptastrea, cyphastrea, leptoseris, etc all get the rotifer blend and a bi-weekly serving of reef roids.
I also mix it up with once a week frozen feedings. I mix frozen cyclops and mysis with reef chili and sometimes reef snow and target feed. The larger corals really love this. The fiber results in a browner, more hardier, stool.
Now we all know how important food is to bone density as well as tissue. There is a limit however! Do you want your kid being another obesity statistic? Good, don’t make your corals look like the people you see at schlitterbahn either. Bi-weekly is the limit on feeding, that’s the optimal frequency, don’t push it.
That doesn’t mean you can’t provide ancillary nutrition which is also very important. My tank receives live phyto every night. It feeds everything and is the very foundation my tank stands on. Phyto feeds my pods, my amphipods, everything else north on the food chain.
Additionally, I do a once weekly amino/carbohydrate dose for the color and sps corals. Any a+b blend will do. Do not listen to the vaccine conspiracy theorists, this will not make the corals poops runny!
Hope this helps.
