food for chili coral.

zoomfish1

New member
What would be best for this coral? Cyclopease or Phyto or zooplankton. I also have Kent Microvert if it would be good.
 
Nobody knows yet. I have had one in my unskimmed tank now for three years. It is the same size now as when I got it, so whatever it is currently feeding on in the tank, it barely getting enough.

Frozen cyclopeeze seems to be too big. I seems to catch and then release the cyclopeeze.

I am currently feeding my tank a mix of golden pearls and DT Oyster eggs. I get a good feeding response from my gorgonian, but can't tell with the chilli.

Fred.
 
I have seen rave reviews on Reef chili food and folks getting a great growth response from their chili corals with it.
 
I took a look at the ingredients list for Reef Chilli.

The bioengineered zooplankton is cyclopeeze, the artemia replacement is golden pearls or similar micro-encapsulated food and the other stuff is readilly available.

The strong feeding response is probably from the cyclopeeze. I ground some down to a smaller size yesterday and got a very strong feeding response from my gorgonian.

Personally I much prefer Eric Borneman's coral food recipie because it has some highly nutritious fresh ingredients.
 
My 2 cents: ZoPlan, just right size. Plus water, left from thawing mysis in the strainer, the second change. I mean, throw away the first water, add the second and use this. Tank water qiality, you know.

I'm feeding in the morning, before lights are on.

BTW, all my chilis (3 of them, right from the ocean) did not good for a long time, then probably adapted. One (the vertical growing kind, not wide) I had to frag, and frag is doing much better than the main coral.

A lot of food and a very high flow. :)
 
I have now added Hikari frozen rotifers and ground up cyclopeeze to my food mix. Am also now dosing phyto for two fan worms added to the tank. Hopefully the chilli will benefit from the increased variety in foods.

Fred
 
Chili corals will ingest target fed diets in the 200 to 300 micron size.

I know this not because I have measured gut contents but because I see the food inside the polyps after target feeding a diet in this size range.

One other tip. Avoid cleaner shrimp in these tanks because they will drive you nuts stealing food from the corals.

Otohime A and B1 from reed mariculture is what I have been using. I will be tring golden pearls soon.
 
Herpervet. Cool observation. My chili is on a large rock 1/2 way back in the tank. Not a good place to observe, but I don't want to rearange the tank.

How long have you been feeding the chilli this food? Have you seen any growth.

Unfortunately, ingestion dosn't mean a coral can/will digest. It would be interesting to see some indication that it is gaining significant nutrition from that food. Growth would be pretty conclusive evidence that it is digesting the otohime
 
Fred,

I have been feeding it for 5 or 6 months but heavily for about 2.5 to 3 months and the corals seem to be growing but not at a blistering pace.

They do look very vigorous and the one that I "neglected" appears to have increased the number of polyps since I relocated it and started feeding.

I do believe they are digesting since I never see them expel any of the diet but your point is well taken.

On a side note one of my colonies has an odd little club tipped anemone that seems to be irritating it near it's base. I really like the delicate look but I am beginning to suspect that they are a potential pest.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9000299#post9000299 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Fredfish
Have you seen any growth.
Unfortunately, ingestion dosn't mean a coral can/will digest. It would be interesting to see some indication that it is gaining significant nutrition from that food. Growth would be pretty conclusive evidence that it is digesting the otohime

I'll second that: I couldn't find pictures of a new growth for a chili corals on the web - at all.
Please, post your photos or links, if you have them.
Very interested.

I have some expansion of the one of my chili corals, but it's more restoring the former appearance, than a 100% new growth.
Have a new growth only for non-photosynthetic gorgonian, with much larger polyps, dried Cyclop-eeze feeding.
 
Now That I have downloaded the users guide for my ancient but excellent coolpix 950 I should be able to fiddle until I get some good pictures so that I can document the coral going forward.

Since it has managed to survive so far on whatever the tank is producing in the way of food, I am hopeful that I will see some growth over the next year.

Fred
 
Fauna Marin Has a food for Gorgonias, Sponges, non-photosynthetic corals called UltraMin-F.I haven't used it but I hear it's pretty good stuff.I also read that they have a special food for Gorgonians that may also work for chili's..HTH
 
The Fauna Marin gorgonian product is mostly phytoplankton. Eric Borneman was not particularly impressed by the ingredients and from what I have found on food/gut content studies, phyto is not likely a food for gorgonians or most other corals.

I am much happyer with a mix of oyster eggs, ground fd cyclopeeze, golden pearls and frozen rotifers. We will see how it works for the chilli.

Fred
 
I may be preaching to the choir but for those that have not used golden pearls you should try them.

Good grief the price is reasonable. $15 for a really large volume. It makes sense to buy the stuff as a group purchase because I can't imagine anyone using that amount before it went bad.

It is way cheaper than the otohime diet. I think the otohime is cleaner in that it doesn't seem to dissolve producing a milky product although that might be an advantage for some corals and other filter feeders.
 
The Chilli coral is non-photosynthetic so does not need any light.

As for flow, its hard to say. Not so much flow that the polups bend back on themselves.

I would not recommend purchasing this coral. Most often it dies. Mine was a hitchiker on some rock I got. I am lucky that mine has survived this long. I am hoping to get even luckier and find some food that will give it enough nutrients to grow.

Fred
 
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