How often should I be feeding my coral frags?

[Brieninsac]

I have about a dozen frags, all are 2-4 months old. They haven't really been growing. I've been feeding them twice a week with Reef Chili. Should I be feeding them more often and squirting the food over them?

[MidwesternTexan]

What kind of frags?

I don't feed mine anything. I don't have scloys or acans though.

[Entacmaea]

Yes, corals benefit from feeding - they feed and capture prey in the wild, and we can replicate that in our tanks. How much you feed often depends on how much you can feed without compromising water quality. Reef chili is geared toward SPS and other corals with smaller "mouths" but a lot of other corals will eat it too. Feeding at night will usually get the best results, as that is when polyps extend and most corals are in feed mode. You can feed a little as the lights go out to stimulate them to extend their polyps - then target (better for frag tank probably) or broadcast feed entire tank. Frags may take a while to get growing, but most will acclimate and start within 2-4 months (depending on species), so other things like calcium, light, Nitrate/Phosphate etc. might be inhibiting growth. If you are testing for these levels and can let us know your results, that would be great.

[Brieninsac]

The frags I have are mainly zoanthids, favias, candy cane, duncan, polyps, etc.

I've been feeding with the lights on since that's when everything is open, thinking they would catch more of the food particles that way. I will try more night time feeding to see if that makes a difference.

Water parameters are normal...
Salinity 1.025
Nitrate 4 ppm
Alkalinity 9 dkh
Calcium 440 ppm
Magnesium 1320 ppm
PH 8.3

I'm using my own version of Julian's Thing for target feeding the corals. I got a 1/4" hollow plastic rod and 3/8" plastic tubing from a local plastics shop for $1 and bought a 150ml irrigation syringe on Amazon for $5.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1557/24068306454_561ef73b7c_c.jpg

[Entacmaea]

Cool - I've made something similar before too - they work well. If your tank is new and you are not getting explosive growth, I wouldn't sweat it too much. Try feeding some at night, which might help - some corals actually "open" and extend feeding structures only at night. Favia's can be slow growers, zoanthids sometimes don't take food. Candycane, Duncans, other polyps should give a good feeding response - extending tentacles and capturing food. Reef Chili might also be too small for these - you might try something just a bit larger - bits of brine shrimp, mysis, etc. If you have a red light, you can wait for an hour after the tank goes to sleep, then target feed by red light without disturbing them too much.

[Ron Reefman]

Do you turn your pumps off when you feed? That can help give them time to capture food.

Also remember that small corals (frags) appear to grow slowly because there isn't a lot of coral polyps to do propagation. Big coral colonies seem to grow much faster because they have lots of polyps that can multiply. Consider a 1" diameter red cap. It only has a few inches of growing edge. Now consider a 10" red cap. It has about 30" of growing edge. It seems like it's growing faster and in total new growth it is. But in terms of the individual polyps, they are both the same.

A tank full of frags seems to take forever to get growth. A tank with just a handful of big coral colonies will over grow the tank way faster.