zuzecawi
Member
While sps may not eat mysis and brine in their full grown size, they certainly do eat phytoplankton and larval crustaceans on the micro zooplankton side of the house. They also eat copepods, as a matter of fact, there is a pretty cool shot on the BBC series The Blue Planet (Coral Seas show I believe) of an acro eating copepods.
What I meant by nutrient poor but sustenance rich, was an environment which provides the food which corals naturally eat, such as live phytoplankton and live copepods, but which is not overwhelmed with excess nutrients in the form of phosphate and nitrates.
I think inherent to this arguement is what exactly each reef keeper is seeking. I tend to follow Eric Bornemans school of thought, that rapid growth is not necessarily a sign of health, and I prefer my corals to have robust growth and strong coloration vs incredible growth. To me, I'd rather see good thick skeletons and sweet polyp extension, than gain an inch a month. Which is why I tend to keep reef like I do. The way I look at it, feeding amino acids and not live phyto and microzooplankton is much like drinking Ultra Slim Fast instead of beer and steak... it'll save some pounds and it might be healthy, but it just isn't as satisfying!
I do think that most of the phyto-based foods out there are junk, and the same with the invert foods. I can see where you would have such a negative image of the importance of phyto if all you ever used was the stuff in a bottle... I strongly suggest culturing it yourself. The culturing of rotifers is a current project of mine, so far, I haven't seen anything bad happen of it, although it hasn't been going on long enough to see if anything good is up either!!!
Either case, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and more ways than a thousand to grow a reef!!! So far, my way seems to work for what I want to accomplish, and I'm checking out everybody else's way to see what I can learn. If there's one thing that stands out most about reefkeeping, other than the price tag, it's how much there is to learn.
And Leonardo... what a gorgeous tank! I look forward to mine reaching that point! All my corals started as frags about quarter sized, a lot of them were throw aways from other reefers for brown color, tissue recession, etc. Yours though, wow!!! Something to be said for Ultra Slim Fast in the right combo!
What I meant by nutrient poor but sustenance rich, was an environment which provides the food which corals naturally eat, such as live phytoplankton and live copepods, but which is not overwhelmed with excess nutrients in the form of phosphate and nitrates.
I think inherent to this arguement is what exactly each reef keeper is seeking. I tend to follow Eric Bornemans school of thought, that rapid growth is not necessarily a sign of health, and I prefer my corals to have robust growth and strong coloration vs incredible growth. To me, I'd rather see good thick skeletons and sweet polyp extension, than gain an inch a month. Which is why I tend to keep reef like I do. The way I look at it, feeding amino acids and not live phyto and microzooplankton is much like drinking Ultra Slim Fast instead of beer and steak... it'll save some pounds and it might be healthy, but it just isn't as satisfying!
I do think that most of the phyto-based foods out there are junk, and the same with the invert foods. I can see where you would have such a negative image of the importance of phyto if all you ever used was the stuff in a bottle... I strongly suggest culturing it yourself. The culturing of rotifers is a current project of mine, so far, I haven't seen anything bad happen of it, although it hasn't been going on long enough to see if anything good is up either!!!
Either case, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and more ways than a thousand to grow a reef!!! So far, my way seems to work for what I want to accomplish, and I'm checking out everybody else's way to see what I can learn. If there's one thing that stands out most about reefkeeping, other than the price tag, it's how much there is to learn.
And Leonardo... what a gorgeous tank! I look forward to mine reaching that point! All my corals started as frags about quarter sized, a lot of them were throw aways from other reefers for brown color, tissue recession, etc. Yours though, wow!!! Something to be said for Ultra Slim Fast in the right combo!
