Is kent micro-vert enough food

Hi,
i've been feeding my corals mainly microvert through a syringe. i try to get as close to them as possible and give a little to each polyp, but what about the toadstools and mushrooms? is microvert enough or should i have something else also? I feed my fish frozen brine daily, does that help with the coral feeding also? i'm just wondering cause i haven't noticed much growth in my corals even with new lighting, so i'm thinking its the food. Let me know your thoughts.
thanks

 

Could you post in your sig box (under your profile) a rundown of your system...

eg light, filtration, tank size, what animals you have, so it will be under every post....helps us to help you

What light did you upgrade to? Growth is affected by color temp as well as watts....what color? Blue = less growth, Yellow = more growth.

Mushrooms don't really need to be directly fed. I feed my food web with DT's phytoplankton. It is refrigerated live plankton, which feed the next level, and so on. You could also use BioPlankton - I forget the company now, but it is a small jar (about 1-2 oz) of frozen plankton, one drop every few days, but it is pricey.

Let us know what other corals you have and we could help a bit more ;D

 

Thanks birdlady, i'm in the process of setting up a whole new tank, but haven't decided on the tank i'm getting. its going on 55 or 70 and then the filtrations and what not, so thats why i haven't added a profile as yet. i'll be sure to do so as soon as i figure out what i'm getting. But i do appreciate the help in the mean time. Right now i have mainly soft corals...toadstools, leathercorals, and a candy cane coral, as well as some polyps. thats about it. I just put in an order for some ricordeas, about 8 of them. Its all under 165 PC- 10K and acitinic.

 

OK, softies are not my bag, so I will let someone else comment on their dietary needs... I like LPS...eg. your candy cane ;D

Is your calcium around 400 and your alkalinity around 3-5 meq/L or 10 DKH? That would be one of the growth limiting factors there, plus they are relatively slow growers. Light could be a bit higher with those, but they should be fine, just grow slowly. I do spot feed my candy cane with some thawed frozen mysis shrimp, Cyclopeeze, and marine one formula cubes.

As far as the brine shrimp for your fish, you may as well feed them Cheetos! LOL! Not much nutrition. Switch to frozen mysis shrimp and I also give mine whatever seafood I may be making for dinner, chopped up fine and raw ... candy canes will eat this as well. There are some good assorted marine flake food as well, but supplement this with good frozen foods a few times per week. :

Hope this helps a little...if I missed any questions, let me know!

 

Hi Vdhillon, Hello BL, I use Phyto like Birdlady to start my food chain. You feed the bottom rung and everything else will benefit to. I also use Kent Coral Excel. It has various amino acids and vitamins and things like that. It also has Iodide which will give the impression of the corals getting bigger but they are just swelling up but I do believe that this product has helped my system. I also feed Reef Chili,. All my corals eat this. Some soft corals feed by absorbing food from the water or the feed sticks to their mucus/slime coating and they get the food this way. All I know is my corals have been growing good and I can tell you what I use. I also just changed my bulbs in my light this week. Wow, I didn't realize they had shifted their color so much. Some of the coral actually were having to re-acclimate to the light even thou I used the same URI bulbs ( 2 110 watt actinic white and 2 110 watt super actinic 46.5 inch VHO ).
Also make sure you have plenty of current on them. They need quite a a bit of flow.

All this along with the leftovers from feeding my LPS corals fresh seafoods and the food the fish miss all my soft corals get plenty. I agree with Birdlady about your lights. They like stronger ones but will grow with what you have now.

Hope this helps.

Jay