Feeding SPS Corals Artificial Foods like Reef Roids or Brine Shrimp in Reef Tanks

Most of us measure our success with SPS and other corals in our reef tanks based on how fast they're growing. It's a good visual indicator of how healthy our sps corals are - and foods like Reef Roids or New Life Spectrum's Reef Micro-Feeder are super easy to feed so if you're not doing that already you'll probably have good luck if you start. It's also trivially easy to hatch brine shrimp, and SPS corals like Pocillopora acuta will readily accept them.
The paper in this video is looking at five different foods for Acropora millepora and Pocillopora acuta and measuring them based on a bunch of things, including weight gain (growth). A. millepora is a very popular SPS coral in reeftanks so I bet a lot of you have them in yours! Unfortunately, the team found that raw seawater out performed every other feeding in terms of growth for A. millepora. P. acuta on the other hand - it grew best with newborn brine shrimp - Artemia nauplii.
That said, it's not just LPS coral that needs to be fed. Stony corals like Acropora only get about 90% of their nutritional requirements from their symbiotic algae - meaning we need to make up the last 10% which, by the way, has critical elements like Nitrogen and Phosphorus in it (the algae in their tissue doesn't provide Nitrogen or Phosphorus compounds). Fish poop MIGHT be able to make up for that, and for sure corals can absorb chemicals from our aquarium's water - but direct feeding of phytoplankton or an actual coral food will help them immensely.
Comparing the capacity of five different dietary treatments to optimise growth and nutritional composition in two scleractinian corals.
Jessica A. Conlan ,
Line K. Bay,
Andrea Severati,
Craig Humphrey,
David S. Francis
PLOS
Published: November 28, 2018
doi.org/10.137...
AlgaeBarn produces a phyto mix called OceanMagik which could be an interesting product to try.
www.algaebarn....
Here's an easy culture system for small live foods and phytoplankton, produced by Reed Mariculture.
reefnutrition....
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[@cyprianlipski3724]

Great content as always. Keep doing great job ! Your channel is very underrated hopefully that will change

[@ReefMan]

I'm glad you like the videos!

[@WickedEfie]

As always, great vid! 🙂

[@georgewright1946]

Great vid

[@ReefMan]

I'm glad you liked it!!

[@user-ju6dz4sx3l]

I use aquaforest amino mix,vitality, build, and energy along with af power food

[@ReefMan]

I've heard lots of good things about AquaForest products.

[@billcarlson4495]

You mention using phyto mixes to simulate seawater so we can reap the benefits the researchers observed. How confident are you that it was phyto that made the seawater better and not something else, what else could it be anyway?

[@ReefMan]

Well phyto is only one component that will be missing in synthetic sea water. There are lots of others too though (bacteria, small pods, organic chemicals, etc). Phyto is just easy to culture at home, or easy to buy, and so it’s as good a place to start as anything. I’m looking for more research on the topic and if I find anything I’ll report back to everyone.

[@mihaia6026]

Most SPS don't eat newly hatch brine shrimp. Those are way too big in size for feeding sps. Also from what I read SPS only eat zooplankton and not phytoplankton. Looking at feeding response reactions in my acropora I only found 3 products that trigger it : some amino acids and 2 x Fauna Marin Coral Foods. I tried some other coral foods and never got a feeding reaction response. Another observation : feeding really makes sense because coral feeding via light is not that straightforward - you need to match par with correct spectrum with correct water params (trace elements and nutrients) , flow and coral position in relation to light , zooxa density etc. I think most acro deaths are related to feeding in some way. Also it's freaking weird that natural sea water is such a trigger of coral growth, it's not even funny.

[@ReefMan]

Yea I do think that newly hatched brine shrimp can be on the too big side for a lot of species, but at least for the two covered in the paper they confirmed that they do actually eat the shrimp. Acropora also use their mucus to collect food, and I think that's how they'll be able to collect phyto and other single celled things like that.

[@daniellongenbaugh5448]

@@ReefMan I remember seeing somewhere on reefing magazine that it is proven that acro do actually consume phyto, but they are mainly carnivores however. So scientist aren't yet sure if they even use their nutrient. I like what you said in the video though, "Trying to stimulate sea water." I have been farming a couple different types of phyto for the same reason. Even if the coral doesn't directly benefit from it, I like to think it will feed something that the coral can eat.

[@dhanking58]

I feed my corals the accumulated detritus in the rocks.

[@ReefMan]

Yea, I do as well. I use a turkey baster to blow out the collected gunk and then that I'm sure helps feed my coral.

[@Keepingitreal123]

*85% energy from photosynthesis