reef tank food chain?

[bnhd3]

i have some questions about the food chain in a reef tank. i purchased some rotifer and phyto cultures from florida aqua farms today. i'm gonna try my hand at growing my own food for my reef. i know that phyto is the beginning of the chain. are zooplankton next? in my tank i have some acropora, zoos, yellow polyps, two types of mushrooms, some open brain, a gorgonian, and a kenya tree. my question is do any of these directly feed on the phyto, or do they eat the zooplankton, or both? i recently started feeding mine with DT's phyto. this is kind of pricey so i want to produce my own. i sometimes use a mixture sometimes of kent zooplex and microvert. i target feed with a syringe.

 

[Paintbug]

i feed both phyto and rotifers to the tank directly. i also use phyto to feed the rotifers. a lot of corals will feed off of both. the pods will as well.

 

[papagimp]

Get more than one strain of phyto to culture for best results. I use Tetraselmis (a larger motile strain) and nannochloropsis (smaller nonmotile strain). TET is one of the better strains you can attempt to culture BTW.

I also feed phyto and rots directly to the tank, well, rots when I have them.

Phyto will feed all sorts of micro-plankton, zooplankton, corals, ect. ect. ect. Most corals are not going to eat directly on the phyto, but there are some that will. The brain coral and won't. Most larger polyped corals like the brains are going to want meatier foodstuffs, like mysis, squid, krill, stuff like that.

Good choice on wanting to culture your own phyto though. If you do that, you'll end up with a nice pod population, so feeding phyto and rots and your food chain should be very good. Maybe a weekly feeding of something else, like the microvert or oyster eggs or cyclopeeze or something. Variety is always good.