Feeding fish affecting SPS corals? YES!!!!!!!!

[dgasmd]

Well, I have been home for a couple of weeks on vacation, so I decided to do a little test. A few months back, I had a major turn around on my corals. Things started to grow very well, colors blossoming, etc. Although I had done some major changes in my habits at the same time, I always suspected for some reason that the pellet food I was adding 4 times per day with a feeding timer was a major culprit if not THE culprit. However, how to test that was another story. Since then, I stopped feeding those pellets altogether and now feed every 2-3 days with nothing but PE mysis and maybe once per week some cyclopeeze in addition to the frozen foods. I may also add once per week a bit of decapsulated brine shrimp eggs. The last 2 mostly for the anthias despite not being able to tell a difference from multiple daily feedings to every other day.

These past two weeks I fed nothing but the pellets again. The fish simply love this stuff . With everything else being equal, including water changes, the coral color have gone to the crapper in several of them. A couple of corals even began to RTN for no particular reason while they had been doing very well and coloring for months. Was that a direct effect? It would be too much to assume it was I think. Not all corals seem affected. LPS do not seem to care as much, but acros certainly do. Some montiporas seem not so bright too. The puzzling thing to me is that PO4 by a Hanna colorimeter and nitrates by salifert test kits remains exactly the same as before. However, what has been drastically convincing for me at least is that these pellet foods is not something I will continue to add ever!!!

This brings up many questions in my mind though. What could be in the food affecting the corals? Was this simply an extraordinary case of coincidence? I don't know, but since I stopped feeding this food today, I am hoping my colors will come back over the next 1-2 weeks. I am due for MH bulb changes, but I will wait for a couple of more weeks before changing them not to add any more confounding factors.

I am sure you all are wondering what food it was. Although I am a little hesitant to say the name, I think I will in 2 weeks when I see what, if any difference, has occurred without using it. I would hate to give these people some bad publicity if it is unwarranted. Especially since I have never read anything bad about it.

So, what foods have you noticed to affect your tank??

[ReelFreak]

Not that I ever noticed any effect on my tank, but I did have some pellets that came in a foil pack that after reading the fine print it said something to the effect of it's shelf life after opening was a few months. I promptly discarded them since I had been using them for close to a year. It made me wonder about why the shelf life was so short, whereas flakes never noted anything about shelf life. I also wondered had I been feeding my tank "spoiled" food??

While not an answer to your question, I wondered why the pellets shelf life was shorter than the equilavent flake....

[dgasmd]

The flakes likely, as all foods do, have a shelf life. They just don't bother to try to come up with one as you are feeding animals with it, not people. Shelf life is an FDA requirement, which does not apply to the pet industry.

[dgasmd]

A bump for the subject as I am surprised of the small amount of responses. Nobody has ever seen any difference, good or bad, from any food they have used?????

[Wiskey]

Well I never noticed a inpact to a certin kind of food because I have a huge amount of different foods all on rotation, the same thing rarley gets fed two days in a row. I even have 3 different kinds of flake.

But I have noticed a big inpact on the corals related to how much I feed. More food, even a little more food tends to make the color more rich, deeper, while starving the tank seems to yeald lighter colors.

I can say though that Nori above all other food seems to make the biggest difference.

Whiskey

[hng]

Originally Posted by Wiskey

I can say though that Nori above all other food seems to make the biggest difference.

Whiskey

What does nori do? Good or bad? This topic is really interesting to me since I only had a fish in my tank for about a week before he died of Brooklynella. That's pretty much the only time I ever fed the tank and after what Whiskey said, I realized that feeding did change the way my montis looked. My montis are pale with polyps extended and they are encrusting. When I had the fish and fed the tank, some of the montis actually had better polyp extension and looked better. Maybe it's time for another fish?

[Spanky]

Originally Posted by dgasmd

These past two weeks I fed nothing but the pellets again. The fish simply love this stuff . With everything else being equal, including water changes, the coral color have gone to the crapper in several of them. A couple of corals even began to RTN for no particular reason while they had been doing very well and coloring for months. Was that a direct effect?

Most prepared fish food are designed for feeding fish. Fish do not care about phosphate and prepared fish foods are loaded in phosphate - especially pellets.

[Wiskey]

Originally Posted by hng

What does nori do? Good or bad? This topic is really interesting to me since I only had a fish in my tank for about a week before he died of Brooklynella. That's pretty much the only time I ever fed the tank and after what Whiskey said, I realized that feeding did change the way my montis looked. My montis are pale with polyps extended and they are encrusting. When I had the fish and fed the tank, some of the montis actually had better polyp extension and looked better. Maybe it's time for another fish?

Nori is a food often fead to Tangs, it is a dried marine green algae. This stuff is loaded in phosphate, and I have noticed that my corals change color quite a bit depending on how much of that I feed.

This is definitally NOT the ideal thing to feed for the corals, but all that Phosphate seems to make a huge difference in coral color and that's why I brought it up.

I think fish are very important for a SPS tank, as well as fish feeding, I would definitally reccomend you pick some fish up, I bet the color of your monties would darken, and I bet they would grow faster too.

Whiskey