Coral Feeding

[rhofmann]

How/what do I feed my corals that will benefit from feeding - whether target feeding or from coral food added to the water?
Corals in my DT: Monitpora, Favia, Chalice, Candy Cane, leathers (tree and cabbage flower), palys, (incl grandis - thx Richard), zoas, ricordia. Also have xenia and mushrooms.
Currently I am using a frozen preparation from LFS called Coral Food (eloquent name) by H20 Life. I defrost it in some tank water and dump it in the tank - tried target feeding the candy cane, not sure I did this correctly. I'm feeding once per week, and waiting about an hour after the DT lights go off (moonlights still on) when tentacles are extended on several of the corals. I have shut off the main circulation pump in the sump for 30 minutes, not sure if it helped the corals get more food or not.
How can I do a better job of this, with a goal of keeping the corals healthy and maximizing growth rate without unduly risking polluting the tank?

[hoffyz]

Hi,
it may help you
www.vividaquariums.com/reefaquariumguide.asp
or same video from another source:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=23F1Rx6fMME&feature=player_embedded

[Richard]

Hey Rich, none of the corals in your tank require feeding. They are all photosynthetic and can absorb nutrients and necessary elements from the water column. Some people enjoy feeding to see their corals feed but it really isn't necessary for those types of corals and doesn't necessarily make a difference in their growth or health.

But if you do enjoy feeding your corals then one efficient way of doing it (in terms of not wasting food and turning it into unused waste products) is turning off all circulation pumps and target feeding with a turkey baster.

You can also use the bottle method where you cut a plastic bottle in half and put it over the coral then squirt food into it through the mouth of the bottle.

However, I would be worried about overfeeding your tank as your skimmer may not be able to cope with that high level of nutrients and your water quality may suffer from it. That being said you seem to be very diligent with your water changes so it may not affect your tank negatively.

[Richard]

By the way this is one of the nicer affordable skimmers I was talking about:
reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2267379

[rhofmann]

Great - thanks, Richard. I'm going to go very easy on any feeding - basically once per week at most, trying to target feed primarily to learn how they feed, what it looks like, etc. The skimmer is also on my to do list - looking around for one.