Feeding gorgs that are not primarily photosynthetic

[Gordonious]

I need to find out if the problem is in the volume of food, getting them to accept the food, or if it is specifically what is in the food. My gorgs have happily eaten a mix of food that I have given them over the last couple of months. I thought that the trouble was getting them to eat and feeding them enough that was the biggest challenge, but never could find anyone to tell me exactly what was best to feed them.

I need to find out if I should feed phyto three times a week and zooplankton of some sort three days a week or what a good mix would be. I doubt someone will have the numbers for me, but I at least would like to find someone that has kept them alive for a while and ask them.

I realize the water quality must be high with the parameters in check and a good flow, so please lets stick to discussing food in this thread.

Jonathon

[Gordonious]

Currently I am feeding them Kent's ZooPlex, DT's Premium Reef Blend, <A HREF="http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=5011&Ntt=zooplankton&Ntk=All&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Np=1&N=2004&Nty=1">Zooplankton</A>, Marinesnow, and arctic pods. I have also in the past bought tiger pods as well as pods from another company online whose name I can't remember at the moment.

[Fredfish]

Its a two part issue. Quaintitiy is one part, and as you have figured out, they need to be fed daily. I suspect that they need to be fed several times daily for best results. It is hard to do this without causing water quality issues.

They other part is what exactly they eat. There have not been a lot of studies on specific corals and what they digest. What a coral takes in and what it digests may be two different things. A coral my only be able to digest some of what it ingests.

Eric Borneman has a good food recipie that he uses for all his corals. I think it is still in one of the stickies at the top of this forum.

Fred

[LesMartin]

There is a thread on the Aquarium Obsessed vendor forum about a new gorgonian food along with some before and after pics.

["Umm, fish?"]

I gotta tell you, I really like the Tropic Marin food. I think that's what LesMartin is talking about. It's expensive, but it really works for my corals. I've gotten feeding responses from corals that I thought were pretty much autotrophic (zoos, mostly). Lots of polyp development from all of my corals since I started using it. But, I haven't tried a non-photosynthetic gorgonian yet (I haven't seen one at the fish stores since I started using this), but I'm thinking hard about trying one.

[Cosmo^Kramer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8728750#post8728750 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by LesMartin
There is a thread on the Aquarium Obsessed vendor forum about a new gorgonian food along with some before and after pics.

Fauna Marin.It seems they have been working on the food for 2 years.The pictures are impressive

["Umm, fish?"]

Ah, you're right Fauna Marin. Sorry.

[Fredfish]

I had forgotten about this new food.

Umm, fish. How long have you been using the food for? Got any before and after pics?

I am always suspicious of manufacturer claims.

There is a guy in the Netherlands that was using a mixture of Fauna marin foods to feed dendronepthia. I believe he kept his corals with this food for over a year.

Personally I have been feeding a mix of golden pearls (5-50 micron) and DTs oyster eggs and getting a feeding response from my new photosynthetic gorgonian, but its only been a few weeks so I have no idea how it is working.

As you know, getting a feeding response does not always mean the coral is digesting what it takes in.

Fred

[cubber]

You may want to check out this month's issue of coral magazine it is all about non - photosynthetic gorgs and their care requirements. I just got my issue in a couple of days ago and it has been some very educational reading!

["Umm, fish?"]

Understand that my story is all anecdotal, this all may be coincidence. I've already posted a bunch of information on this thread:

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic50763-9-1.aspx?

But, I do happen to have a couple of pictures. Here's a seriatopora before I started using the foods (this picture's from the end of August):

http://65.102.221.68/IMG_1345_web.jpg

This picture's from the end of November:

http://65.102.221.68/IMG_3793.jpg

Now I know that these guys are fast growers and that's a good bit of time, but look at that polyp extension. All from the bottom, too, where it's not interfering with photosynthesis. There's obviously something in the water that it wants to catch.

I've also noticed accelerated growth on my montis, acros, tubipora, euphyllia, and tubastrea. (12-15 new tubastrea polyps budding out of the main colony this month! I've only target fed twice in that time, but I do feed the tank pretty heavily.) Again, it might have nothing to do with the new food. But I just bought some more. :)

[i2ik]

Thanks for the pictures! I was wondering if you are using the product with the reactor or simply put the product in your tank?

Also are you stopping your skimmer each time?

The pictures tells a lot about that product! I am amazed by it!

[Gordonious]

Sorry I have been slow to keeping up with my own thread. It's final exam week. Thank you all for your posts. I looked at the Aquarium Obsessed thread with the beautiful pics of gorgs, but when I visited their site I was unable to find the food.

[jeremai]

I feed Kent ZooMax and ESV Spraydried Phyto every day, just after lights out. My tank has two Diodogorgia nudiliferas, and a bunch of photosynthetic gorgonians.

Here (http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/3/inverts) is a good article on feeding non-photosynthetic gorgonians.

["Umm, fish?"]

I am not using any reactors for their products. Nor am I using zeolite. I also do not stop my skimmer. But, I do feed numerous times/day. And do lots of water changes, grow lots of macroalgae, run a phosphate remover and carbon, etc.

If you go to their website, go to the Online Store, USA, Fauna Marin, Foods. Not the best way to organize the site, IMO, but no one asked me. :)

[Fredfish]

Say, that thread looks familiar. :D

Actually, Eric's last reply on that thread applies here and it goes back to what I wrote earlier. Can you get the coral enough food?

I have communicated with a couple of people who kept non-photosynthetic gorgonians like swiftia and both gave up around the 1 year mark. They found it very hard to give the coral enough food without overloading the tank with nutrients.

If you could find a good way to target feed them, you might be more successful.

Thanks for the pics "Umm, fish?". The increased polyp extension is interesting. Do you find that this is happening with all of your corals?

Fred

["Umm, fish?"]

I bet it does! I really enjoyed that thread (other than typing all those ingredients :) ). Thanks for starting it!

I'll try to get some more pictures over the next few days, but I have noticed much more polyp extension around the tank. Here's a monti (picture was taken Dec. 1):

http://65.102.221.68/IMG_3903.jpg

["Umm, fish?"]

Well, so that I don't take this completely off-topic, here are some pics of my (photosynthetic) gorgonian feeding. I had just added the Fauna Marin products.

http://65.102.221.68/IMG_4387.jpg

http://65.102.221.68/IMG_4389.jpg

I took a bunch more pictures, but gorgonians move a lot....

[Gordonious]

Does anyone happen to know a site where I could find pretty specifically how much light Gorgonians need? I really like the ones I have and will be doing a tank with photosynthetic corals soon so I would like to try some.

Also, would anyone be interested in trading frags? I only have a yellow and a red frag to trade.(well a couple yellows) Both of which are primarily not photosynthetic and a dark high flow area of the tank is just about required.

Jon

[LesMartin]

Ummm, fish?
Which food was it? the Ultra Sea fan ?

["Umm, fish?"]

No, it was UltraClam and UltraMin. I haven't even seen the UltraSeaFan and from what I can tell, there are others, too. It all sounds rather complicated. It's a good thing I'm just tossing food in a tank. :)

[dendro982]

I have the red finger non-photosynthetic gorgonian, Diodogorgia nodulufera, it shows some growth and a higher density of the polyps.

- it was very healthy at purchase - all polyps were open;
- it's in the small tank, this allows to achieve a high density of the food; several times a day to a snow density, not a blizzard;
- high flow, covering all branches of the coral,
- filtration is all day off, food continue to recirculate in the tank until was eaten,
- I don't have access to the food, like oisters eggs and golden pearls, so my gorgonian receives:

-- dried Cyclop-eeze (this is a little big, ~600-800 mk, different sizes of particles, pulverized by rubbing each other, may be), have photos with cyclops inside the polyps.
-- ZoPlan is the next, more expensive, but smaller size, with particles of the wide range. Good for this gorgonian and the chili corals too.
-- risky to the water quality, but works too - water, left from defreezing mysis in the strainer. Throw away the first water, add the second change, swish few times, add into the tank. Works for gorgonian, chili, Christmas tree worms, filter feeding cucumber, scleronephthya. I will not argue, why it couldn't be, but I had the listed above for a several months, receiving no other food, than mysis water and cyclop-eeze. All are live and grow.

BTW, need detailed help how to make this nano-system better - filtration and skimming on-off, refugium, the cheap way to make this setup, that should occupy the least amount of space, and be not 2-tiered. Anyone? I'll post a separate thread with this question, just trying to reach the right people.

[Gordonious]

Glad to hear of another person keep an non-photosynthetic red gorg and getting growth. It's funny you mention the mysis juice. I had never fed mysis when I started this thread, but just purchased a sun coral. I sprayed some of the juice in the tank to try to get the sun coral to open up and noticed with in seconds every polyp on every gorg I own had caught something. Since then I've put all the juice in the tank. I hardly have anything else in the system and the system is very large for the animals I have so I over feed on purpose for my gorgs. I will find a way to make this work.

Jon

[dendro982]

It's more "fine particles of mysis", washed from nutrient-rich water.
I tried to add unwashed quarter of frozen cube - water was quickly fouled. But - there were no skimmer and no fine filtration.

[Fredfish]

Gordonius. I have been struggling with the question as to how to feed a limited number of corals in a system. Ideally you want the coral to get a decent concentration of food over a longer period of time.

My problem got worse when I bought two featherdusters that really need to be fed phyto almost continuously.

I now have a cheap and easy way to dose the phyto (which stays in suspension for a long period of time). All I am using is an airpump, gang valves, tubing and a 1L olive oil bottle. I am using the air on a slow bubble to force phyto through tubing to a point just upstream of one of the featherdusters. I think I can deliver phyto over a 5-7 hour period of time with the 1L bottle.

You can see the whole setup in the picture below. The white arrow points to the featherduster, the blue one, to the feed tube.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/1790Drip_Feeder_Small.jpg

I first tried this with a 125ml flask but it only lasted for about an hour. I might be able to get a little more out of it with a needle air valve.

All you need for feeding the corals is a way to stir the liquid to keep things suspended. You could do this using magnetic stirrers driven by a small low rpm motor. I have everything except the stirrers from other projects and hope to have something going soon.

I think this is a good way to deliver a good density of food to your corals over a longer period of time without having to worry about how much food you put into the overall system.

Fred

[Gordonious]

Thanks for sharing Fred. I've read about similar systems for a long time now. The only real problem I have right now with that would be getting that much food. I have a protein skimmer to get that much out and all the other parts(well I don't have a stirrer either.)
I think later this month may be a good time for me to study up on culturing phyto. If I do finally get a place set up to culture phyto I may try to culture pods outside of my system as well to boost my populations for when I get mandarins. Perhaps if I get a good population of pods going the young pods will provide a little bit of food these filter feeders as well.

Jon

Jonathon

[Fredfish]

The only real problem I have right now with that would be getting that much food

Not sure I follow you on that Jon. With only a few corals, target feeding will decrease the overall amount of food put into the tank, and increase the amount of food avialable to the coral.

Building the stirrer would be a bit of a pain if you are not into DIY.

Fred

[Gordonious]

The primary food I am feeding right now would be Marine Snow, DTs reef mix phyto, Zooplankton, Artic pods, and a little bit of mysis juice which are all frozen or in the fridge and then I add some freeze dried cyclopeze which I plan to eventually replace with frozen. So everything I have can not be kept in my room which is kept at 72*F in a 2L bottle for automatic feeding. I've seen plans to build something to suck the food out of the fridge, but I am not allowed to have my own fridge and if I plugged in a fridge anywhere near my reef tank the whole basement would lose power.

I suppose what I should have said was getting food that could be fed that way and not "that much food". What I meant really is I need to start culturing my own food. When I start to think about culturing phyto I just start to think about waiting for the stuff to grow.

Jon

PS If if I did culture food I would still supplement with the other things.

[mr.wilson]

I have had good success with Polyp Labs' "Reef Roids". http://www.polyplab.com/reefroids.html

I add a small amount to the water and wait a few minutes for the polyps to open. Then I target feed it with a baster. Waiting till lights-out also assures that the gorgonian will have its' polyps open, ready for food. Reef Roids is fine enough to remain free-floating for hours, and doesn't seem to cause algae problems or phosphates.

Argent also has a few good products. Artificial Plankton, Microfine Spirolina, Decapsulated Brine Shrimp, Cyclopeze, and of course brine shrimp eggs. http://www.argent-labs.com/argentwebsite/feeds.htm

I have a Purple variety with purple polyps, from Bali. It's in very high, intermittent flow, from a wave generator. Has anyone had problems with too much flow. I haven't had it for long, but it's doing well.

[dendro982]

Has anyone had problems with too much flow. I haven't had it for long, but it's doing well.

The ends of my red finger gorgonian's branches are no more erect - they curved away from the flow. ~150 gph in 6g.

[Fredfish]

I suppose what I should have said was getting food that could be fed that way
Gotcha. I have been wondering about how long some foods might last unrefrigerated. If there is partial breakdown over say a 4 hour period, would there be more benefit from having food available for 4 hours than was lost from food breakdown over that same 4 hour period? I don't know where to go to figure this out.

Fred

["Umm, fish?"]

Fred,

Well, they are big, ugly, and expensive, but I've now bought one of these:

http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/10364/cid/2399

When I get it set up down in my fish room, I intend to use it to trickle a constant small amount of food right over the input of my return pump.

Good luck!

[Fredfish]

Hmm... big & ugly. That would fit very nicely with the rest of my system. :rolleyes:

I was more concerned about frozen foods like oyster eggs than the dry stuff.

Fred

["Umm, fish?"]

Yeah, me too. But I haven't quite figured that one out yet. Maybe a kalkwasser stirrer inside a refrigerator connected to a dosing pump? :)

[Gordonious]

I have plans for a system inside a fridge, but I think our reef club is still trying to get the guy to get a patent so I don't want to pass them around yet. This is the ultimate feeder though.

["Umm, fish?"]

I've seen a few ideas tossed around, most of which I don't have the mental or mechanical capacity to try. Frozen cubes, dropped via auger, quickly thawed with tank water, and then washed out to the tank, etc. I'm not ever going to have the capacity to build that. But, I'm becoming sorely tempted to try the kalk stirrer idea. Any criticisms you can think of about it?

[Fredfish]

I bet a small cooler and cold packs would work just fine for the volumes we are talking about.

Fred

[dannyfromholland]

Have you guys seen this article? As you can see I've used a kalkwasserstirrer to dose frozen foods. Pictures are seen in the article in the link below. In my new set up I'm goiing to modify the feeder because this one need a lot of maintenance due to clogging off the piping.

http://www.marineaquarium.nl/februari-2006english.php

[Fredfish]

Hi Danny. Yes, I have read that article. I have been following the Dendronepthia thread in the advanced forum here at RC. How are the dendros in your tank doing? Is that really a basket star (crinoid) in the middle of the first picture?

My main concern with dosing frozen foods is how long the food will last before bacteria start to break it down too much. I think that a drip system using airline an airpump (or peristaltic pump) and a glass jar would be much simpler. I do not know if I could keep the food cool enough in the water to stop it from breaking down too much.

Fred

[dannyfromholland]

Hi Fred I'm tankless since augustI've moved to a new house and sold all my corals. The tank shown in the article was more off an experiment to me wheather to decide to build a new dendro set-up or a SPS set-up as it was before the experiment. I've decided that the new set up is goiing to be a pure non-photo.sp. tank. The new set up is goiing to be 950 gallons. The planning is to start building end off this month or so. The new tank is goiing to be an inwall.

I did not have a basket star in the old tank. The foods I've used had some preservations in build in it (i've checked that with the suplier) but I agree the fresher the better. I'm working on a new mixer that is beeing fed by a refrigarated feeder (air lift).

Cheers
Danny

[Fredfish]

I hope you let us know about your new tank when you get it going.

Fred