Carbs for Corals? The importance of feeding your corals.

Feeding for corals lets them build up energy reserves, stored as carbs, lipids, and as various proteins. Unlike lipids and proteins, corals cannot create their own carbs - they have to eat. They can't get them from the sun, or from our reef tank lights. In some heavily stocked tanks fish poop might provide enough food of the right particle size, but the vast majority of us need to supplement that natural food source with one more specifically intended for our corals.
Carbs in particular provide a long lasting energy reserve for our aquarium corals. These are provided by all our usual reef tank coral foods - Reef-Roids, MarineSnow, Polyp Poppers, they're all good if your coral will eat them. Particle size is particularly important, so if your Acropora isn't eating something perhaps try something finer. What your Acropora eats your Chalice will probably just ignore. The food needs to match their mouths!
Sources:
Kochman, NR., Grover, R., Rottier, C. et al. The reef building coral Stylophora pistillata uses stored carbohydrates to maintain ATP levels under thermal stress. Coral Reefs 40, 1473-1485 (2021). doi.org/10.1007/s00338-021-02...
Cumbo, Vivian & Baird, Andrew & van Oppen, Madeleine. (2012). The promiscuous larvae: Flexibility in the establishment of symbiosis in corals. Coral Reefs. 32. 10.1007/s00338-012-0951-7.
The ATP molecule is from Wikimedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosi...
A genomic approach to coral-dinoflagellate symbiosis: studies of Acropora digitifera and Symbiodinium minutum
Shinzato Chuya, Mungpakdee Sutada, Satoh Nori, Shoguchi Eiichi
www.frontiersin.org/article/1...
The Symbiodinium cells photo is from Wikimedia.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
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[@adamschaafsma5839]

Very interesting, this fits with my observations this summer with the corals in my garage where daytime temperatures in the aquarium water were routinely 87°F to a max of 90°F one day.

[@ReefMan]

I’d love to have an outdoor tank/pond but I worry about the temperature. Hopefully you didn’t loose too much during the heat wave!

[@deebKen]

I read it as crab so I was like hmm feeding crabs to corals? Ahaha

[@traianboala3798]

Your subjects are so interesting. Thank you for gathering the data for us. But...man... what happened with your tank?

[@rc2300s2r]

Yeah! I wonder if BRS will continue to snatch up everything in their path and grab this guy too. 😆

[@ReefMan]

Thanks! My tank had a pump go bad and copper from the motor windings killed everything. I’m just starting to plan the rebuild. More on it in the next video in fact!

[@ReefMan]

I’m not really interested in ever working for someone on this channel. It’s a fun hobby, and something I can do at my own pace and on my own style and topics. Maybe a sponsor someday (probably not), but I’d want to stay independent.

[@rc2300s2r]

@@ReefMan Good to hear. 👍🏼

[@traianboala3798]

I'm so sorry to hear about your crash. I'm sure you'll get it around very soon.

[@insanity4224]

Do you think that lowering the temp in times of stressed corals might be of some benefit? By the way I would love a tank update and to hear your plan to recovery 👍

[@ReefMan]

Maybe, it does slow down a lot of metabolic processes. I bet keeping the water at the proper temperature is overall better though. I’m going to do a tank update next week.

[@joemcauliffe8792]

It’s interesting concept of reducing metabolic process might help in some way with already damaged or stressed corals. I had a sps crash in my tank but 2 Acro’s and a Monti had fragments survive in protected lower light sections of the rock. All other affected sps died completely. I just found it interesting that they survived in the low light/ shaded spots. I had a power failure and temps dropped 4 deg C but I think the killer was lack of flow for about 4 hours. I really enjoy your videos thanks and keep them coming.

[@insanity4224]

@@joemcauliffe8792 I would say the temp drop should not be a problem as this happens on the reef during storms and acros can be fully exposed on the reef at low tide either in the sun or at night so temp swings are normal for them. However the drop in oxygen level from lack of flow would have been the killer of your corals and the small pieces in lower light that survived would have had much lower metabolic requirements. I think our corals are pretty starved compared to wild colonies too as reef tanks have nowhere near the amount of edible bacteria in the water column.

[@alexsulewski2497]

First

[@ReefMan]

You’re on the ball 😂