new to reefkeeping what food to order online for corals?

[ant81]

im new to reefkeeping and wanted to know what food do corals mostly eat? liquid food? soft and lps

[jon99]

Lps will usually eat small to medium sized frozen and freeze dried foods such as cyclopeeze or mysis shrimp. You can also get fresh seafood (clams, shrimp, squid, fish etc) chop it up really fine and freeze it in ziplock bag. Lps will eat it right up. Soft coral in my experience are more dependent on the lighting and dissolved nutrients in the water and don't necessarily have to be fed directly. Some of my mushrooms do respond to the cyclopeeze but it has to be mashed really fine with a mortar and pestle for them to suck it up. As far as specific brands: frozen cyclopeeze is one of my favorites, many people like Rod's food and coral frenzy... Golden pearls are freeze dried and come in very small sizes for harder to feed corals, never used it but heard good things. Oyster eggs are super small and can be fed even to some sps due to the small size. They are pricey tho.

[small alien]

In general, you're not going to need food for softies. LPS will take a variety of meaty foods depending on the size of their mouth. I've fed whole krill and large pieces of herrings to "meat" corals. I've fed cyclopeeze to Galaxia. Mysis for fungia, favia and others. It depends on your corals. LPS definitely benefit from regular feeding (2-3X per week). Good luck.

[ant81]

thanks helpful. so i would need a long sea squirt Feeding prong to feed my corals? and then place it over coral and squirt it on them?

[jon99]

What I use is a rigid piece of airline tubing (you can find it at petco, petsmart, etc) connected to a 10ml or larger syrige with a regular soft piece of airline tubing.

But yes, you have the right idea. Often it's best to turn off all the flow for 15 minutes or so to allow the food to settle on the corals. They'll respond by moving it in their "mouth". When it looks like the food is mostly gone you can turn the pumps back on.

[ant81]

do i really have to turn off all flow?

[jon99]

Not necissarily. You can try feeding them with the pumps running, but the food often gets blown off the coral before they have a chance to grab it. Turning off the pumps will eliminate this. It's just a matter of tiral and error.

[cherubfish pair]

I've seen where people take and cut off the top of a 2 liter soda bottle and stick it over their coral. Then they just introduce the coral food through the top where the cap was. That way the food doesn't disperse throughout the tank and you can even do this with some pumps running. I will try this soon.