Fish Poop or Reef Roids - What is the Better Food for Coral?

[that Fish Guy]

Fish Poop or Reef Roids - What is the Better Food for Coral?

Many many people stress Feeding Coral.

Some say they Feed their Fish and the Fish Poop is enough to Feed the Coral.

Others Dose stuff like Reef Roids, Coral Frenzy, Coral Chili, etc.

So I have a Frag Tank with no Fish in it.

And the Corals obviously need food.

So I have been Feeding Reef Roids and Reef Chili Twice a Week.

Problem is is my Phosphates and Nitrates keep rising and I am getting all kinds of unwanted Algae.

I would like to just do bigger weekly water changes but that just throws my Alkalinity off (Currently I am looking for the Perfect Low Alkalinity Salt - Next I think that I am going to try Fauna Marin Pro).

I have other Tanks without Algae issues where I just Feed the Fish in there.

So my Question is should I Stop using Reef Roids and Reef Chili and just add Fish to this Frag Tank and just Feed the Fish?

Or maybe add Fish and Add Less Coral Food?

What do you think is a better Food for Coral? Fish Poop or Reef Roids?

P.S. Please Vote in the Poll that I added to this Thread as well.

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

There are other factors to algea p[roblems than the amount of feeding. If the tank is newer it will be harder, if the rocks are leaching phosphate, insuficcient CUC, more lighting doens't help, but of course you need that for the coral too. i remember when I converted my FOWLR to a mixed reef. After i added LEDs, my algea growth skyrocketed for a while before I got it under control.

As far as feeding goes, I feed my coral and my fish heavily every day and still have little algea and undetectable Nitrate due to carbon dosing. I've been cutting back as I want to have barely detectable Nitrates. I've also been feeding the fish even more, though I am being careful because it takes time for the extra food to turn into nitrates. Don't want to over shoot it.

 

[that Fish Guy]

Anybody else have any thoughts that they would like to share on this?

 

[ca1ore]

My answer to your poll would be 'both' I don't intentionally feed my corals, but I do use foods (like LRS reef frenzy, ocean plankton, cyclopese and Rods) that contain finer particles so the corals clearly get some of it. I also feed my fish a lot (4 times/day on average) so fish poop is a food source too.

Are you running your frag tank on a separate system or as part of your main system?

 

[DivingTheWorld]

First, I am no expert so take this with a grain of salt.

I've been trying to figure out why my 4 month old tank has colorless SPS. I've tried feeding my fish less and feeding my fish more, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. I have 11 fish in a 90g tank which should be plenty?

From my reading on this forum, it sounds like primarily my issue is that it's a new tank and hasn't been properly seasoned or aged.

So my current thoughts are, if it's a new tank you probably need to feed coral food. If it's an old tank, you can probably get away with just feeding the fish and letting their poop feed the corals.

Thoughts?

Incidentally, I'm planning to try a combination of Acro Power and Reef Chili on my tank and see what happens...