SPS Dominated Food Recipe

J

johnnstacy

Premium Member
I am putting together an SPS coral recipe to feed every other night or so, I am looking for input on the ingredients. Many of these ingredients came from Eric Borneman's coral recipe. The thing is, I think his recipe is for a mixed reef. I am trying to cater to an SPS tank so I have tried to use only ingredients that might be beneficial to SPS. Your feedback on additional ingredients or opinions about my existing ingredients are welcome. Oh and if you are one of those that believe that only fish poop feeds a reef, your opinion is noted but that is not quite what I am after:

Golden Pearls 5-50 micron
Frozen Mysis
Frozen Rotifers
Frozen Brine Shrimp
DT's Oyster Eggs
Marine flake
Spirulina powder
Super Selco
Echinacea
Kelp Powder
Sea Vive
Fresh shrimp
Fresh Oysters
Fresh Mussel

Basically all of this will get pureed and put in flats and then frozen

Eric's thread on this recipe is here for reference:

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic20086-9-1.aspx

Again, if you see anything that SPS will not benefit from or have any additional items you would add, please chime in. By the way, if interested, I got most of the above ingredients from http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com. It's hard to find frozen rotifers and most of the frozen items above are CHEAP there. Thing is, you end up buying a lot. Good to have friends that can take some of the extra.
 
I personally don't think any of these are needed. Just by feeding and regular fish waste, your sps should do fine. It's up to you but I really think you are just putting excess food into your tank. If you had LPS or zoos, then they would benefit but I've never had to feed mine and mine grow very quick.
 
Scratch the flake, add Cyclop-eeze, freeze it, and that's pretty much what I use for fish food. The corals get what's left over. (Along with the fish poo of course :) )
 
Cyclopeeze is too large for consumption on sps. This comes up quite a bit and while I think overall feeding the tank can be helpful, I honestly think any benefit to your SPS is very minimal.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8014933#post8014933 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jay24k
Cyclopeeze is too large for consumption on sps. This comes up quite a bit and while I think overall feeding the tank can be helpful, I honestly think any benefit to your SPS is very minimal.
Click to expand...


I don't know if I agree or disagree with this. Only because I happened to notice that the polyps of one of my SPS frags had snagged some cylcopeeze that I added to the food (I use it to feed fish, the corals can fend for themselves!!) There was no mistaking as to what was on the polyps. Now, whether or not the coral was actually eating this stuff or not, I cannot say. Again, not every coral attempts to catch food when I feed the tank. Just a casual observation that I noticed today.
 
I think cyclopeeze could possibly be captured on a polyp but it is pretty well known they are unable to consume any organic matter of that size. If you read a few books, you will see how this is so. I do not mean to come off rude at all by my last statement. I just spend quite a bit of time learning as much as I can about this hobby. Many people also think DT's is consumed when it isn't.
 
jay24K

I didn't consider your post rude in any way. Again, you may be correct in stating that SPS doesn't actually consume large foods such as cyclopeeze. Just to the casual observer, it can seem as if they do. The factual answer to this is in the hands of people with much more scientific knowhow than I.
 
Well, I asked for opinions. I guess I got them. It is strange to me that the majority of you would dispute what Eric and others have to say on the subject. I consider him an authority with some published work to back it up.
I would have rather heard something like, "I'm just to lazy to feed my fish and my corals" or "I'm satisfied with the growth rate and color of my corals and don't want to do anything else." I guess I had expected to find more folks involved in this. Well, just goes to show that there is no "one way" to do this hobby.
 
Here's some of Eric's words when discussing Yuri Sorokin's research from this link. http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog/e_borneman_051098.html

Indeed, corals do actively feed on bacteria in the mucus, in the water, and attached to particulate matter. They typically utilize them for 5% of their diet, by weight. This is on an efficiency level on par with many of the specialized filter feeders and sponges. Sorokin found that, in general, bacterioplankton ingestion alone can provide from 8-25% of the coral’s respiratory demands. This amount is the equivlent of 1-10% of the animals total biomass per day...from bacterioplankton!! Its assimilation index by nutritional content is the equivalent to the nutrition acquired by the capture of small crustaceans (which are by weight, much greater and a greater energy expenditure to capture). Phosphorus, a normally limiting resource in coral reefs, is found in the cell walls of bacteria. Coral consumption of bacterioplankton provides them with a more easily assimilated source of phosphorous than from the uptake of inorganic phosphate contained in the water.

The degree to which any coral feeds on bacterioplankton is species specific, and depends largely on whether they possess ciliary-mucus filtering mechanisms. All surveyed corals utilize bacteria as a significant part of their diet, but some of the genera which depend to an even larger degree on this resource are Acropora, Pavona, Goniopora, Favites, Symphyllia, Leptastrea, Tubstraea, Seriatopora, Pocillopora, Montipora, Porites, Hydnophora and Turbinaria. Zoanthids are all very heavy consumers of bacteria. Soft corals and gorgonians also feed on bacterioplankton. However, compared to the stony corals, many do not produce similar amounts or compositions of mucus to enhance this ability . The xeniids and other soft corals with a heavy mucus coat, expectedly, consume more. Tubipora musica and certain small polyped gorgonians, including Mopsella, are also extremely proficient bacterial feeders.
Click to expand...

If you read the whole article, WHICH I HIGHLY RECOMMEND, you can hit [CTRL] F to pull up the "find" dialog box and punch in Sorokin. However, the whole article is based on his work. Eric really brushes over some things in it but there are some things that the boards rarely discuss, AEROBIC denitrification, the fact that there are more than 80 strains of bacteria doing things in our tank, etc. Just in the paragraph I paraphrased above, it shows that corals do not like to capture pods because of the energy expenditure....they like to capture bacteria in mucous nets. Not only that, they "farm and raise" bacteria for their food needs. These things are rarely discussed on the reef boards.

I didn't feed my SPS anything extra. Seeing as how zooxanthellae can provide up to 95% of the corals daily food needs and bacterioplankton can provide 8 to 25% what more do they need?

I simply keep sufficient current to get fish poo (that is covered with bacteria) suspended in the water column to feed the corals.
 
We need a link to the 95% energy budget of corals being met by zooxanthellae. That's the highest figure I've read yet, by far :D
 
Kurt said,
"Can provide up to 95%", You should not take that as the definitive statement for every coral in every environment.
He is right and you are right.

"The importance of zooxanthellae in providing some of the energy needs of symbiotic corals can not be overstated. Shallow water corals have been shown to receive well in excess of 100% of their daily carbon needs through photosynthesis. There are many products that the zooxanthellae make and package for the corals, including glycerol and various amino acids. Even shade adapted corals or low light corals can modify various aspects of the zooxanthellae and the photosynthetic opportunity. While such corals, including shallow water corals, are never fully autotrophic, the input from zooxanthellae is still significant. Correspondingly lower levels of light force corals to gain more energy from feeding and absorption of organic and inorganic nutrients, and these inputs can vary widely depending on the nutritional status of the coral, variations in the light field, and the availability of external nutrients."

Here is a link for you GreshamH, it is an oldie but goodie.
http://www.reefs.org/library/aquarium_net/0998/0998_4.html
 
I find it odd that Eric would spend the time to feed his coral and promote the feeding of SPS when 95% of the corals needs are already met. I guess he must be bored.
 
LOL Letmegrow!!!

That's the same link I was going to provide. I also agree that my choice of wording was poor and could be misconstrued easily.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8018086#post8018086 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by johnnstacy
I find it odd that Eric would spend the time to feed his coral and promote the feeding of SPS when 95% of the corals needs are already met. I guess he must be bored.
Click to expand...

I had a 200g SPS frag tank that was fed nothing but fish poo as there was nothing besides cyclopeeze that could possibly be small enough to be ingested by an SPS. (Obviously I had to feed the fish to get the fish poo). I had very good growth and coloration in both the colonies and the frags. If I noted the colonies lightening, I fed the fish a little more for a few days.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8018085#post8018085 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Letmegrow
Kurt said,
"Can provide up to 95%", You should not take that as the definitive statement for every coral in every environment.
He is right and you are right.

"The importance of zooxanthellae in providing some of the energy needs of symbiotic corals can not be overstated. Shallow water corals have been shown to receive well in excess of 100% of their daily carbon needs through photosynthesis. There are many products that the zooxanthellae make and package for the corals, including glycerol and various amino acids. Even shade adapted corals or low light corals can modify various aspects of the zooxanthellae and the photosynthetic opportunity. While such corals, including shallow water corals, are never fully autotrophic, the input from zooxanthellae is still significant. Correspondingly lower levels of light force corals to gain more energy from feeding and absorption of organic and inorganic nutrients, and these inputs can vary widely depending on the nutritional status of the coral, variations in the light field, and the availability of external nutrients."

Here is a link for you GreshamH, it is an oldie but goodie.
http://www.reefs.org/library/aquarium_net/0998/0998_4.html
Click to expand...

yah, old is right. I've seen countless papers since then, that show differently.

I too wonder why Eric feeds his corals, if as the article states, 100% of the energy budget can be met by sunlight alone (odd, it doesn't produce any amino acids in that process). Gotta love conflicting papers :lol:
 
"Twenty years ago, it was thought that nonzooxanthellate nutrition only accounted for, at most, 25% of the total energy needs of corals. We now believe that symbiotic corals, as a group, actually obtain anywhere from 20-50% of their nutrition from heterotrophic feeding, depending on average levels of plankton and dissolved organic matter. Some scleractinians are capable of meeting 200-300% of their basic energy needs by heterotrophic feeding, and most regularly meet more than100% of their metabolic needs in such fashion. Zoanthids and octocorals can generally meet 10-100% of their needs through heterotrophy. (Intake in excess of an animal's basic energy needs is required for growth and reproduction) Feeding also increases the respiration rate of the entire colony and leads to increased growth. Starvation has many consequences, not the least of which is the expulsion of zooxanthellae."
(Aquarium Corals, Eric H Borneman, Pg 58)

"Intake in excess of an animal's basic energy needs is required for growth and reproduction"
 
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