Phytoplankton

JonLatham

New member
I am fairly new to the hobby but am getting better by the day. I have a 65 gallon tank with a 29 gallon sump. My tank mainly consists of soft coral and lps. I've tried feeding my tank reef roids a couple of times but my tank does not respond well. I get huge phosphate spikes and that's when things go south.

So I've been reading about feeding my tank phytoplankton. It seems like a more natural approach to feeding my corals with less side effects

Does anyone here dose phytoplankton? If so how much and how often?

Thanks
 
I culture my own phytoplankton for my copepod hatchery, I do add it to my tank sometimes, maybe once a week. It is an algae so you do have to be careful or you can turn your tank water green very quickly. I have some filter feeders, clam, feather duster, porcelain crab, which benefit from phyto, and also the coppods in your tank.

I dont know if corals benefit, there is lots of mixed info online about corals benefiting from phyto or not.
 
I grow my own phyto and feed my 150 gal tank 3 to 4 oz daily. Corals are thriving and I don't see any negative effects.

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I do feed phyto through a doser, but not until the system was a year old.
If your in the earlier stages, it just brings on pest algae.
 
I feed Reef Plankton (frozen cubes) and Reef Roids periodically and I dont have alage issues nor does my water quality drop enough to make my SPS corals unhappy. Im doing that on a 20H with a HOB and no skimmer and weekly 2.5 gallon water changes. I also have no fish that require to be fed in my tank so I dont have food going in my tank on a regular basis like many might. Not bragging or tooting my horn just wondering what am I doing that your not doing? Maybe you have a lot of fish and I dont is the reason...

Have you thought about instead of feeding the whole tank of just spot feeding those LPS to cut down on food entering the tank? I know I am pretty stingy on the amount of food going into my tanks!

You didnt specify what Softies you have but I would imagine most of them will do fine without feeding unless you have some non-photosynthetic corals. Things like Zoanthids though will benefit from being spot fed occasionally though for sure just the same way your LPS corals would benefit.
 
Feeding corals is a very tricky proposition due to the species specific responses. Not only do corals have specific preferences an individual coral may demonstrate a "goldilocks" response to feeding where too little or too much is worse than nothing. I would hold off feeding your corals until you have information on the specific species you're keeping. And keep in mind feeding your fish is arguabley the best way to feed your corals as corals prefere the urea and ammonia from fish over nitrates and fish poop supplies carbanates as well. Here's links if you want to read more:


https://www.academia.edu/1647139/Coral_farming_effects_of_light_water_motion_and_artificial_foods

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0207956

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0044848619310282

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0188568

https://www.pnas.org/content/108/10/3865
 

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