SPS Targeted Feeding Macro Video Experiment
- Thread starter biggles
- Start date
trueblackpercula
New member
Ya no I have a question for everyone.
If one pyolp catches food does that food feed the entire colony or just that one that caught it.
Just a little food for thought lol
If one pyolp catches food does that food feed the entire colony or just that one that caught it.
Just a little food for thought lol
biggles
Premium Member
Hey everyone, glad to see a bit of interest in the polyp feeding tests. 
DiscusHeckel after watching numerous trial feeds of the acros under differing flow and lighting i am quite certain now that the majority of the coral foods added under full flow pump conditions are missed by the polyps and are actually 'turbo charging' the biological life in my system as a whole. I have particularly noticed the pod and mysis reaction to feeding Reef-Roids when i was videoing in macro with the pumps off. They would literally stampede towards the front glass where i was dropping the roids down onto acro frags and within 30 seconds i'd have heaps of critters behaving like teenagers at a rave concert lol.
I think both the roids and the cyclop-eeze are tremendous dry foods for boosting the numbers of all manner of micro fauna in reefs right down to the bacteria level as you mentioned. The pulped mysis meat is the only frozen food i use and everything loves that stuff as i'm sure everyone knows.
I think that the use of all fresh LR and building up the feeding slowly has given me a very high performing biological filter which is helped out with a reliable and well performing skimmer.
That's bad news on the rotifers mate, perhaps they're too large. I haven't ever used them so i don't know how large they are but particles about 1/10th the size of a grain of salt or smaller are what i see consumed the most.
Thanks for the video Michael, looks good to me and i want to see your oyster feast test as i don't have access to foods like that unfortunately. I totally agree with your view that the SPS polyps stand a much higher chance of success capturing particles when water flow is zero or minimal but there's no way i'm going to hand feed all my acros every bloody night like that lol..... they have to use their catchers mitts or go hungry. :smokin:
I don't know about the fish eggs but they'd need to be tiny to directly target the SPS polyps mate. If the LPS like them it's highly likely they are too large for what we need, flubber happy - SPS unhappy.......... :reading:
Hey Kathy, if you have the roids you should definitely start using it as i'm sure you'll see benefits to your system overall. Everything appears to like the stuff so you can't really go wrong imo. :thumbsup:
Just be aware that it's highly concentrated so a finger pinch is like a full cube of frozen food as far as i'm concerned so treat any extra additions of roids as you would increasing your fish feeds, don't go crazy too fast as you don't want to overwhelm your filtration.
From the sound of things i'm sure you're right yano, it's easy to forget just how small the polyps in my videos actually are due to the macro lens and the small food particles you see them capture are barely visible to the naked eye. They will try to capture things larger than they can handle such as whole mysis but release them withing 20-60 seconds generally. It isn't enough to simply watch the initial polyp reaction to a food type because you may see them closing hungrily in reaction to a food however the vast majority or all of it may subsequently be rejected soon after without directly feeding the coral at all.
I have to say that having spent literally hours laying on the carpet macro videoing what goes on in my reef system it's made me much more aware of the vastness of the microcosm we all have hiding away in our tanks. I think the right foods can make a difference to your colors but it's not just through direct feeding but also providing enough correct food to foster a healthy population of critters that can place food into the water column regularly through their life cycles.
These are just my opinions and i know less than most so feel free to disagree or add to anything i may have raised. Hopefully we can end up with a better idea of what may be the easiest way to accomplish what we all want as saying feed your fish more as i see all the time doesn't seem to yield a wealth of colorful SPS tanks any more than all the other methods we use that seem to also work for some but not the majority. I hope no one takes this the wrong way because i don't mean it badly but overall i think we should be able to see many more cool SPS tanks than we do here as everyone seems to have the right equipment and knowledge to succeed with SPS but so many have a hard time getting the results wanted.
Many of you guys that have stunning SPS systems - (you know who you are or should), achieve results in many different ways using vastly different husbandry techniques so there must be common factors giving you results as we all know how selective and finicky SPS are when it comes to changes. Whatever they need in the ocean to thrive must be the same thing that they're getting in the awesome systems some of the RC guys here have.
If i can put a fresh wild acro in my tank and 2 weeks later it's vibrantly colored, has great PE and is growing/encrusting then surely that means the acro basically doesn't know it's been yanked form the ocean it was in........:reading:
That should put most of you to sleep before you finish reading it all lol......
DiscusHeckel after watching numerous trial feeds of the acros under differing flow and lighting i am quite certain now that the majority of the coral foods added under full flow pump conditions are missed by the polyps and are actually 'turbo charging' the biological life in my system as a whole. I have particularly noticed the pod and mysis reaction to feeding Reef-Roids when i was videoing in macro with the pumps off. They would literally stampede towards the front glass where i was dropping the roids down onto acro frags and within 30 seconds i'd have heaps of critters behaving like teenagers at a rave concert lol.
I think both the roids and the cyclop-eeze are tremendous dry foods for boosting the numbers of all manner of micro fauna in reefs right down to the bacteria level as you mentioned. The pulped mysis meat is the only frozen food i use and everything loves that stuff as i'm sure everyone knows.
I think that the use of all fresh LR and building up the feeding slowly has given me a very high performing biological filter which is helped out with a reliable and well performing skimmer.
That's bad news on the rotifers mate, perhaps they're too large. I haven't ever used them so i don't know how large they are but particles about 1/10th the size of a grain of salt or smaller are what i see consumed the most.
Thanks for the video Michael, looks good to me and i want to see your oyster feast test as i don't have access to foods like that unfortunately. I totally agree with your view that the SPS polyps stand a much higher chance of success capturing particles when water flow is zero or minimal but there's no way i'm going to hand feed all my acros every bloody night like that lol..... they have to use their catchers mitts or go hungry. :smokin:
I don't know about the fish eggs but they'd need to be tiny to directly target the SPS polyps mate. If the LPS like them it's highly likely they are too large for what we need, flubber happy - SPS unhappy.......... :reading:
Hey Kathy, if you have the roids you should definitely start using it as i'm sure you'll see benefits to your system overall. Everything appears to like the stuff so you can't really go wrong imo. :thumbsup:
Just be aware that it's highly concentrated so a finger pinch is like a full cube of frozen food as far as i'm concerned so treat any extra additions of roids as you would increasing your fish feeds, don't go crazy too fast as you don't want to overwhelm your filtration.
From the sound of things i'm sure you're right yano, it's easy to forget just how small the polyps in my videos actually are due to the macro lens and the small food particles you see them capture are barely visible to the naked eye. They will try to capture things larger than they can handle such as whole mysis but release them withing 20-60 seconds generally. It isn't enough to simply watch the initial polyp reaction to a food type because you may see them closing hungrily in reaction to a food however the vast majority or all of it may subsequently be rejected soon after without directly feeding the coral at all.
I have to say that having spent literally hours laying on the carpet macro videoing what goes on in my reef system it's made me much more aware of the vastness of the microcosm we all have hiding away in our tanks. I think the right foods can make a difference to your colors but it's not just through direct feeding but also providing enough correct food to foster a healthy population of critters that can place food into the water column regularly through their life cycles.
These are just my opinions and i know less than most so feel free to disagree or add to anything i may have raised. Hopefully we can end up with a better idea of what may be the easiest way to accomplish what we all want as saying feed your fish more as i see all the time doesn't seem to yield a wealth of colorful SPS tanks any more than all the other methods we use that seem to also work for some but not the majority. I hope no one takes this the wrong way because i don't mean it badly but overall i think we should be able to see many more cool SPS tanks than we do here as everyone seems to have the right equipment and knowledge to succeed with SPS but so many have a hard time getting the results wanted.
Many of you guys that have stunning SPS systems - (you know who you are or should), achieve results in many different ways using vastly different husbandry techniques so there must be common factors giving you results as we all know how selective and finicky SPS are when it comes to changes. Whatever they need in the ocean to thrive must be the same thing that they're getting in the awesome systems some of the RC guys here have.
If i can put a fresh wild acro in my tank and 2 weeks later it's vibrantly colored, has great PE and is growing/encrusting then surely that means the acro basically doesn't know it's been yanked form the ocean it was in........:reading:
That should put most of you to sleep before you finish reading it all lol......
CT Reefer
CTARS Member
"That should put most of you to sleep before you finish reading it all lol...... "
..not at all. This is one of the more valuable threads on RC. We all want healthy, happy great looking SPS. The info you've provided gives us a chance to try it out in our tanks with a degree of confidence that we're feeding something beside the skimmer!
Kathy
..not at all. This is one of the more valuable threads on RC. We all want healthy, happy great looking SPS. The info you've provided gives us a chance to try it out in our tanks with a degree of confidence that we're feeding something beside the skimmer!
Kathy
biggles
Premium Member
Thanks for the positive feedback my friends
I haven't heard of DR GS SPS MAX but i'll definitely look into it, like most things it's probably not able to be imported into Aus....... customs suck
I've been using a plastic paint scraper to squish the mysis on a plate repeatedly until it's a goopy mess but a kitchen whizzer thingy would work way better - gotta get one still.
Here's the tank this morning at 9 months with nothing but wild collected SPS which i began adding at the 1 month mark. Nothing has failed to exhibit good coloration or growth overall and even though the tank is young i think you'd be hard pressed to say my feeding has not been effective on the health of the corals. We just need to work out the best way to keep our corals colorful with the least hazardous nutrient addition method so more reefers are rewarded for all the time and effort they put into their systems i think.
I'll check out what new foods i can try on the acros this weekend when i go to my LFS for an acro hit.......
I haven't heard of DR GS SPS MAX but i'll definitely look into it, like most things it's probably not able to be imported into Aus....... customs suck
I've been using a plastic paint scraper to squish the mysis on a plate repeatedly until it's a goopy mess but a kitchen whizzer thingy would work way better - gotta get one still.
Here's the tank this morning at 9 months with nothing but wild collected SPS which i began adding at the 1 month mark. Nothing has failed to exhibit good coloration or growth overall and even though the tank is young i think you'd be hard pressed to say my feeding has not been effective on the health of the corals. We just need to work out the best way to keep our corals colorful with the least hazardous nutrient addition method so more reefers are rewarded for all the time and effort they put into their systems i think.
I'll check out what new foods i can try on the acros this weekend when i go to my LFS for an acro hit.......
trueblackpercula
New member
Outstanding and I wish we didn't live so far apart as I would love to this in person. Here is the information on the first food that I tried.
http://************.com/2012/04/23/coral-vpower-coralenergizer-coral-foods-preis-aquaristik/
http://************.com/2012/04/23/coral-vpower-coralenergizer-coral-foods-preis-aquaristik/
biggles
Premium Member
Hey mate, i had a look online and as usual i can't get that bloody food here
Hi Kathy, i am lucky to be so close to the GBR and all the reefer friends i've had who have gone diving on the reefs have returned gibbering idiots when they try to describe the amazing corals and colors they saw lol.......
Hey Joe, i squish a whole cube of mysis and feed it to the tank every second night now since adding more fish as i give those stupid pooping things a block unsquished on the other day - what a waste of good coral food lol.......
I haven't tried fish eggs as yet mate but since you described the reaction you saw i'm definitely going to source some.
How big would you say the eggs were that you saw the polyps reacting to as everything i've seen looks way too big to be ingested - i can always squish them like i do to the mysis i guess, i need a kitchen whizzer thing as all this squishing is getting to be like work and we don't want that......... :thumbsup:
trueblackpercula
New member
Ther is always the fish eggs they sell fior sushi lol
trueblackpercula
New member
I conducted another test this weekend with oyster feast I will post a video later tonight. It's interesting to see the reaction of the Sps.
DiscusHeckel
Acropora Gardener
I used to use Reef Nutrition's Oyster eggs. My sps corals went mad as soon as I put some in my tank. We cannot get this product in the UK anymore due to some EU regulations.
trueblackpercula
New member
ok here is the video I shot with my Iphone 5 this Sunday 09292013 let me know what you think vrs my first post with coral v power . Also is there another food source that i should try next let me know.
enjoy
http://youtu.be/XXrzj-8CaXw
enjoy
http://youtu.be/XXrzj-8CaXw
stickleback
Member
How about some fish poo:hmm6: That would be interesting!
