Soft Coral Health and Feeding

Background
65 gallon tank 2.5 inch sand bed, 20 lbs of crushed coral/fine sand layer on top.
temp 77.0, salt 1.025, ph 8.2, amm 0, nitrites 0, nitrates 10-20
tank is 6 weeks old. fish and corals are all healthy now.

Questions I need answers to:
1. When feeding DT plankton and other quickly water soluable substances is it good to shut downt he overflow & return leaving only the powerheads running in the tank?

2. If so, for how long should they be off? 1 hour? more?

 

some say 30mins some say an hour, some say no need to... i turn off everything for 15 mins when i feed, then turn on my flow for 15 min then the overflow.... watch your corals and see how long it takes for them to eat

 

i feed cyclopeze to all my corals some crushed some whole. i turn of every thing in the tank except for one ph that flows over the sand. you can notice if you watch them, colt corals, and similar corals with the small feathery polyps can catch food pretty easily, you will see polyps retract when they have got the food, lps corals like frogspawn take the full 15 min to get the food down.

 

Soft corals will feed on nitrates, phophates, and detritus that gets disturbed through one means or another.
adsorption and absorption are the key ways in which these corals can receive essential nutrients, without target feeding or other similar feeding measures.

 

I think in other words - no need to feed soft corals

 

Exactly!!
By stirring up detritus and the excess nutrients in your tank are all that is required for their food needs-moreover, most soft corals contain zooxanthellae, hence the beneficial light recdeived by the host zooxanthellae will feed the soft coral as well as a result of the photosynthetic process of the zooxanthellae.
You have to be careful with using the liquid, frozen and other coral and invert foods, to ensure you are not adding too much placing adverse repercussions on youyr water quality.