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Does food affect coral coloration?

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coral feeding
1K views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  Dave's Not Here  
#1 ·
Curious if anyone has thoughts/experience on this. I know that food can affect fish coloration. I wasn't sure if it could have the same effect on corals.

As an example, I recently bought some New Life Spectrum Ultra Red pellets. They're supposed to highlight orange/red tones in fish. I have a snowfish clown who has really deep orange in him, so I thought it might help keep his colors deep.

I have several corals with reds in them as well. Some favia, favites, acans, lobo, zoas, chalice, etc. If there any chance that feeding these pellets would also give more color to corals?

Side note: I have a red chalice that I got for $1 from the LFS because it was nearly dead. It has remained mostly dead for months. This morning it ate a whole 1mm pellet, which is great news. If I can keep it eating, I think it might just bounce back. So rewarding rescuing a coral!
 
#5 ·
While most corals derive a lot of there energy from photosynthesis from xoozanthella think of each coral polyp as a mini anemone and realize they will probably thrive better if they are able to capture specific prey from the water column.
Different corals will feed on different items and it seems likely that the amount and tpe of food they eat will have some effect on color, however the type of light you give them is another influence