Cali Kid Corals

www.CoralScience.org

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If you haven't ran across this website yet, it's well worth numerous hours of your time to review :)

http://www.coralscience.org/main/

it contains the absolute best coral feeding article I have ever seen :)

http://www.coralscience.org/main/articles/nutrition-5/how-corals-feed

We at Reef Nutrition are so impressed we're sponsoring them to aid in their work.
 
I shoulda posted about it months ago. I guess I need to look over my links section and post the rest soon :)
 
Thanks Gresh for sharing these invaluable info! The coral feeding article alone is mind-blowing for me, it answered lot of questions which has been disturbing me in the area which I consider most complicated and confusing in reef keeping.

For one, if you ask the question 'what should I feed my corals' in any public forum, you will most likely get 10 different answers from 10 different people, varies from 'I don't feed anything other than fish poops' to 'here are 10 things I feed to my corals' (now I know these answers are all correct and all incorrect). But if you ask 'what light should I use', you will certainly not get answer varying from 'I don't use any light at all' or 'here are 10 lighting sources that I use, alternate on daily base'.

For two, I can never image coral feed on some of the sources without reading the article with scientific studies behind it. For example I have always wondering how come fish poops alone can meet the requirement of coral feeding, you know when those people say they never feed their coral other than fish poop, esp. some of them have huge tank with gigantic healthy colonies, I keep wondering how much can fishies poo, and how much are obtainable by corals v.s. lost in filtering system. Now I understood more determined factor in this case are probably fish pee (but literally nobody say that), plankton produced by huge and seasoned aquarium, and PO4 in the water.

For three, I have been always suspecting that corals feed on PO4, from my observations, but I keep denying my thought, cause I thought PO4 is almost zero in nature reef, how come corals feed on it. Now I know corals adapt and learn how to feed in new environment, this also explains why some corals never grow in my tank (cause these are ones never learned how to feed in my tank) and why captive bred corals are easier to keep alive (cause these are ones that already learned how to feed in home aquarium), and importance to provide diversity of food source for corals.

Anyway I could be wrong and the article could be wrong in many points but more important is right on concept, after all not everyone is as lucky as those who have wonderful tanks of corals because they just did everything right, without realizing some of keys to their success.
 
Unfortunately, this nocturnal festivity is somewhat ruined by the presence of a protein skimmer, which cannot tell the difference between what is useful and what is not.

Ha I knew there was a good reason to set the timer to turn it off at night besides it being to loud for me to sleep :)
 
Sfork said:
Unfortunately, this nocturnal festivity is somewhat ruined by the presence of a protein skimmer, which cannot tell the difference between what is useful and what is not.

Ha I knew there was a good reason to set the timer to turn it off at night besides it being to loud for me to sleep :)

Very bad idea to turn off your skimmer at night. The tank is heading into its lowest DO point and you want to drop the only thing keeping it boosted?
 
GreshamH said:
Sfork said:
Unfortunately, this nocturnal festivity is somewhat ruined by the presence of a protein skimmer, which cannot tell the difference between what is useful and what is not.

Ha I knew there was a good reason to set the timer to turn it off at night besides it being to loud for me to sleep :)

Very bad idea to turn off your skimmer at night. The tank is heading into its lowest DO point and you want to drop the only thing keeping it boosted?
So turn off skimmer, turn on airstone?
 
So what you are telling me, is add auto feeders to the sump that drop in alka seltzer at night.....and also pretend the CO2 is O2.
 
Coral reefer said:
Anyone seen studies on how much if at all running macro algae in a fuge on a counter lighting
Cycle from display helps with DO?
Yes, but ...I think. I know I have seen them with CO2 which you can track with pH..and CO2 and O2 are intimately coupled with plant respiration.
 
Do is super easy to test... just get a DO meter :) We've got a dozen at our facility but for bio-security reasons I can't use any of them on my tank :( I wish I had a couple hundred bucks to spare for one.
 
There is an old article that analyzed the impact of a skimmer on gas exchange and it was found to be pretty low compared to other things like open surface area in your tank.
 
GreshamH said:
Sfork said:
Unfortunately, this nocturnal festivity is somewhat ruined by the presence of a protein skimmer, which cannot tell the difference between what is useful and what is not.

Ha I knew there was a good reason to set the timer to turn it off at night besides it being to loud for me to sleep :)

Very bad idea to turn off your skimmer at night. The tank is heading into its lowest DO point and you want to drop the only thing keeping it boosted?

Good thing I also run a reverse refuguium :).
 
Qwiv said:
There is an old article that analyzed the impact of a skimmer on gas exchange and it was found to be pretty low compared to other things like open surface area in your tank.

That study was highly flawed (kinda a well known fact, but I guess it's not as known as I thought)
 
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