what do corals eat?

[boom-sage]

what do you feed corals and do they need to be fed on a regular basis. thanx

 

[Ethos]

micro-plankton is what I'd feed mine. but there's alot of thingsyou can feed em.

 

[ecto1]

It depends on the species of coral. Some don't need to be fed while others do. And yeah... I don't know too much about corals, sorry. I'm still waiting on my light system. I'm sure someone more knowledgable will come around shortly.

 

[steelhealr]

Hi..there are some corals that don't need feeding at all and are photosynthetic. Mushrooms and ricordia are examples. Some of these tho' will benefit from occasional feedings, usually zooplankton or phytoplankton. Here is pic of one my photosynthetic ones, a yellow Fiji Leather:

Others are absolutely stunning but need to be hand fed and that includes every head in the grouping...sun corals are one these. The need meaty foods. So...corals can be pretty complicated. You really have to have a mature tank and have some 'flight time' under your belt'. Good luck. SH

 

[Ed4567]

The majority of corals we see in captivity (with the exception of sun corals, a few soft corals- drendos, and a few gorgonians) contain symbiotic algae. This photosynthesises providing the coral with nutrients. In addition as far as I know, polyps can also capture food directly from the water column. The size of food which corals can capture obviously varies greatly- a frogspawn LPS coral is going to be able to consume a very different sort of food to a soft coral.

Generally in my experience as long as you have a healthy system with live rock, feeding most soft corals is unnessassary, although they may benefit from it occassionally with a good phytoplankton. Most LPS will benefit from a bit of meaty food occassionally, and I dont know about SPS.

Unfortunatly the most spectacular corals colour wise are often non-photosynthetic (since they are reflecting the light rather than absorbing it) and these will require heavy feeding.

 

[chkltcow]

I feed mine Kent Phytoplex, Two Little Fishies Marine Snow, Cyclopeeze, and my hammer coral will even eat mysis shrimp when I feed that to the fish.

 

[boom-sage]

thanx for the info guys