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Unread 02/01/2013, 10:35 AM   #36
Big E
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: South Euclid, OH
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Quote:
Please post a link to back up this statement. Particularly the part where coral reefs have massive input coming from phyto, microbes, and zooplankton. If this were true, there would have been no need for the symbiotic relationship between coral and zooxanthellae to evolve in the first place. It is the lack, or scarcity, of plankton that drove this evolution. It would be more appropriate to say there is very little plankton, of any kind, on healthy growing coral reefs.
Broneman did a series of articles on the Foods of Reefs---

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/author/eb.php

That might help you dig it up there. It's something crazy like 10,000x the amount of food passes through reefs than we can supply in our tanks. I'm not sure if it's labled in what types of forms.

I've seen shows on NGC about the massive amounts of food forms that travels through reefs.

You could also do a google search & it shouldn't be hard to find some info as I don't think it's a rare scientific find.

Now the question is...........how much of this are the corals actually taking in, seeing that they can produce most aminos on their own with the help of the zoo? I suspect it's more feeding everything else on the reef and they all benefit from fish to the bacteria. Who gets what from who is probably a complex question in a natural reef that is dependent on each other from the apex predator "the shark" down to the bacteria.

I do know from my own personal experiences though that if the fish in your tank get enough, the corals get enough unless your fish load is verrry low.


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Ed
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