Who uses FM products?

Most corals are carnivorous, so they eat zooplankton, as well as bacterioplankton. However, phytoplankton is an integral part of the food web, since zooplankton and bacteria will consume phytoplankton, its still good to dose it.

I'm not an algae expert by any means, but in the vertebrate world, herbivory requires a different type of digestive system to handle the cellulose. As simple as corals are, they probably don't possess the machinery to digest phytoplankton even if they wanted to. Cows, for example, rely on bacteria and protozoa in their gut to break down their food for them. Corals might be able to eat partially degraded phytoplankton that is being eaten by bacteria as well. Just an assumption on my part.
 
Hi

You must see the word phytoplancton different

What we breed the most of that they did not eat , but like UHU said it is ok to dose for the tank,

Phytoplancton in the sea is mostly bacterias and them very small
that is what some corals can eat or catch with their mucus
You will not find spirulina in a reef ;-)
 
rowjimmy said:
Mike is there a big difference between Shellfish Diet and Phyto Feast? Which one is better?
Click to expand...

Shellfish diet contains different species than phyto feast I think. It is about as concentrated as you can get and more cost effective IMO. It's so viscous that it doesn't settle.
 
Hey guys,

Not to hijack, but returning for a second to the issue of whether corals eat phyto, Fabricius' paper in '95 concluded that for at least some species of dendros and scleros, their diet consisted mostly of phyto. That finding (I believe) was based on the fact that it was primarily phyto that was found in the gastrovascular cavities of the dendros and scleros he observed/dissected. Is the current understanding that these corals probably eat decomposing phyto and the attached bacteria (i.e., rather than intact phyto cells)?

I'm not arguing one point or another....just curious if anyone knows. :bum:
 
Concerning Dendronephthya, there was a paper published in 2001 by Widdig and Schlichter that used radioactive labeling to follow carbon incorporation from algae ingestion, and not just go by what was found in the gut. It was found to make up at best about 26% of their energy demands. It was brought up as a possibility that this was also from already lysed algal cells, and metabolites released by the algal cells. Definitely a worthwhile read.

From the abstract:
The incorporated microalgae contributed a maximum of 26% (average of the four species studied) to the daily organic carbon demand, as calculated from assimilation rates at natural eucaryotic phytoplankton densities and a 1 h incubation period. The
calculated contribution to the daily organic carbon demand decreased after prolonged incubation periods to about 5% after 3 h and to 1–3% after 9 h. Thus the main
energetic demand of Dendronephthya sp. has to be complemented by other components of the seston.

And later on:
By analogy, algae ingested by Dendronephthya sp. could become utilisable by an autocatalysed breakdown without involvement of the coral’s own enzymes. The contact with the pharyngeal tissue could start autolysis. In situ or in the algae cultures, a certain amount of the cell population is just in the stage of lysis. One might
speculatively argue that it was mainly these algal cells just in the stage of lysis that were ingested. Together with the control mechanism in the pharynx, this could
explain the low ingestion rates.
 
No problem! It is from:

Phytoplankton: a significant trophic source for soft corals?
Helgol Mar Res (2001) 55:198-211
 
HI beez,

when you site the 1995 paper of Fabricius et al. (Fabricius, K.E., Benayahu, Y., Genin, A., 1995. Herbivory in asymbiotic soft corals. Science. 268, 90-92), then you should also cite the correction that was published a year later (Fabricius, K.E., 1996. Herbivory in Soft Corals: Correction. Science. 273, 295.)

The fundamental question about herbivory in soft corals is the size of the phyto and/or the species we are referring to. As Claude already said in his post, when aquarists talk about phytoplankton, they talk about those few species that are actually available in culture. Personally I don't know of any study that has shown that any azoo soft coral actually ingests species like Nannochloropsis, Duniella etc. All the stuff that we usually culture is huge, they form particles that are at least tens, some even hundreds of micron in size. However, most of the phytoplankton biomass in the Oceans is made up from species like Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus, which are few microns in size. The size difference is comparable between a steak and a whole cow.

Cheers

Jens
 
Last edited:
Thanks Jens!!! :D I didn't even know there was a correction!!

I love this forum - it's so cutting edge
 
^x2. This forum is about pushing the envelope :) Now I'm curious - does Claude use any of these smaller species in his foods? Ultra clam? Ultra sea fan?

Also, concerning phytoplankton sizes, this would also explain why with the more available species we use, there must be some degradation before it can be of any use to Dendros.
 
Uhuru I was wondering the same thing.....

.....another observation - under the dendro system feeding regiment (the one that uses 70% CLAM, 20% LIFE, and 10% PAC), FM recommends adding BIO (bacteria) to the food mix before use. Maybe this is designed to start lysis of the CLAM?
 
The dendros probably eat the bacteria that are eating everything else in the mix, and as you said they also help partially degrade the other foods making them more available as well. Small bacterial blooms definitely "turn on" my dendro.
 
Hi Beez

i hope i get the new manual translation back in a few days
then you can start to work with our new mixes

what you feed actual to your dendro?
 
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