Most Successful Foods

[ReefMonger]

Well Im in the planning stages and have read through countless threads. Im wondering what everyone feels are some of the more successful foods to feed these beautiful creatures.

[stunreefer]

What kind of NPS coral do you plan on keeping? Gorgs, Dendronepthya, Scleronepthya, NPS in general?

It seems the Fauna products are used many times in a "paste," particularly for NPS gorgs.

I've been going through Eriks (Kreeger1) thread (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1240790&perpage=25&pagenumber=1) and he was using Rotifeast and Shellfish 1800 (pic from his thread) with seemingly good success:

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e109/kreeger1/DSCN0542.jpg

[ReefMonger]

I want to do a mix of everything if possible. I have 180 gallons to play with

[aninjaatemyshoe]

I've used the Reef Nutrition shellfish diet and rotifeast, and they work very well. I've also heard great things about the Fauna Marin foods like UltraClam and Ultra Sea Fan. Personally, I like to do a good combination of a bunch of foods.

[Kreeger1]

The only draw back to dendros and scerlo's is when you run out of food for a few days the don't bounce back well, I would guess the food cost per month for a 50 gal tank would be around 75 to 100 dollars to be success.

I think the food I fed my tank feeds much more then the corals, it feeds the micro fauna that reproduce and in turn feed my tank.

I lost most of my non photo creatures due to lack of food, Im keeping just a hand full now that seem to be hardier. The larger the polyp on the non photo creatures = easier care imo.

I don't believe anyone has figured out the care or key yet to Dendro's for long term success.
Erik

[aninjaatemyshoe]

Hey Erik, do you know how Chuck's dendros are doing nowadays? Did his die off as well?

The stuff all either died or was given away, but not due to a tank crash or anything. I was sick and had to be in the hospital for a month this summer, so the tank had to be torn down.

With my new tank I'm not even going to bother with Dendros. They're just not worth the work IMO. I might try a couple Scleros though, as they seem to be slightly hardier.

[Kreeger1]

Chuck's tank took a hit, lost power and didn't rebound well. He still has most of his corals but there smaller frags now. He's setting up a 30 gal tank to see if he can reproduce his main tank results on a small scale.

Month in the hospital, sounds serious you ok?

[aninjaatemyshoe]

It happened back in late July. I'm doing much much better now. It was a case of pancreatitis. I lost 60 lbs, not too good. It might not have been so bad if I hadn't been pig headed and went to the hospital as soon as I started to feel pain. I ended up going when I was practically passing out from the pain.

That sucks about Chuck's tank. These non-photo tanks are really unforgiving when it comes to things like that.