how often should i feed my corals
 

i have a bubble, plate, pipe organ, blue mushrooms, yellow polyps, recordia i feed them frozen krill every couple of days is there somthing better i also use some marine plankton in a squirt bottle every so often is there a specific type i need for each coral as well as how often do they need fed

I feed my LPS (bubble, brain, acan, hammers, torch, frogspawn, candycanes), ric and yellow polyps with mysis, zooplankton, cyclopeeze, bits of silverside, shrimp etc. made into a coarse mush. I use a pipette to target feed them every few days after lights out, and they also catch bits of frozen foods when I feed the fish. Some people feed once a week, some never, some daily. I don't think there are any 'rules' about how often to feed corals, you want them to get enough to eat without polluting the tank. What works in one tank might not work in another; play around and see what works for you.

thanks for the advise sounds good

acblinky, how long do you wait after your lights go out to feed?

Most corals don't feed on phytoplankton directly. Feather dusters, gorgonians, clams, and coco worms are a few of the filter feeders that do. Unless you have an organism that does, adding phytoplankton will only foul the water. I culture rotifers for the coral but don't target feed any of them, just add it to the tank about every 3 days or so. You might want to look at Eric Borneman's Aquarium Corals, it addresses most of the nutritional needs of the corals we frequently keep.

Around half an hour or so - the corals are used to being fed, and usually put out feeding tentacles shortly after the lights go off. One thing that can help to encourage them is to relase a small amount of food in the tank about 15 minutes before you do the spot feedings. This gives the corals a chance to 'smell' the food in the water and open up.

I use a combination of different foods and it seems to be working MUCH better than just phyto. I mix phyto, cyclops-eze, oyster eggs, ocean's blend for sps, and coral frenzy which has food for sps, lps and others, all in a cup with sea water and use a turkey baster to target feed. I find the cyclops-eze and oyster eggs really help to feed lps corals like the oned you named above. They swell up about an hour after the lights go out and love to feed now. I feed about every other day.

I feed every other day because my tank is a BB frag tank which is filtered continuously with carbon and a skimmer. For tanks with a sand bed and more livestock feeding can be less often. As for the lps corals I would feed them every week or so, and the mushrooms really don't need to feed because they feed on diatoms in the water already and do not need much food for their health anyways.

thanks for all the info ill give it q try you have been very helpfull