Feeding corals? or not?

[Kevin8888]

Hmmm... high maintenance algae scrubber or skimmer? I'll pick the skimmer. Scrubber looks like a real PITA & lots of salt spray everywhere. Toss in a skimmer & smell the skimmate brewing. You'll wonder how your tank ever survived without one!

I wouldn't say its any harder then a skimmer, every so often you harvest the growth, and if your tricky enough you can grow a macro on it to feed herbivours, skimmers need their cups to be cleaned, and every so often to maintain preformance they need to be disasembled and scrubbed down, as for salt spray, if you do it right there should be none to minimal amounts.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Eric Borneman gave our reef club a lecture on scrubbers. His conclusion was--they work extremely well but aren't really worth the work/time/maintenance involved.

 

[Kevin8888]

Eric Borneman gave our reef club a lecture on scrubbers. His conclusion was--they work extremely well but aren't really worth the work/time/maintenance involved.

Well I guess its all about perspective, he/you are probably right, for the average aquarist its more work then they want/worth, but for me its not I want my phytos to stay phytos not gunk in my skimmer haha.
As for work/time/maintenance, I'm not concerned as I have little else to do with my free time haha. And again I want to try to use it to grow macros for my tangs (mite not work but worth a try) so if I can the maintience will just be what I need to do to feed my fish haha.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Hey man, if you want to do this, I say go got it! Just not for me or the average reefer. I like to keep things simple. No auto dosing/top off--dose nightly by hand. A tsp of pure, buffered vitamin C/day, keeps my nitrate at 0.

 

[MyFishEatYourFish]

i switched from skimming to scrubbing and do less maintence. scrubbers also take out the bad stuff only, skimmers take out good stuff before it turns bad, but do nothing once its bad. so, scrubbers do it better and make for a healthier tank by far. once you way in not having to clean algae off your glass as often and not having to pay for all the supplements a skimmer would eat, any diy effort is by far outweighed.
in my opinion there are those who love scrubbers, and there are those who have never tried one. puffer-punk, i suggest giving them a go, i think you will be suprised!!!

 

[Pufferpunk]

Sorry, no interest & no room.

 

[Reeftanker3295]

People have their preferences, and skimmers are much easier. If I had the room I would try a scrubber but they require alot more room and can be a PITA. For feeding corals, most corals do not require feeding and alot of corals are not known to take any food that we can give them. Feeding mushrooms is not needed but they will grow faster. Feeding some LPS is sometimes required and you can feed mysis or some other prepared coral food. Other than that, I wouldn't feed any other corals. They get their food from photosynthesis, why add the extra nutrients into the tank?

 

[Kevin8888]

For feeding corals, most corals do not require feeding and alot of corals are not known to take any food that we can give them. Feeding mushrooms is not needed but they will grow faster. Feeding some LPS is sometimes required and you can feed mysis or some other prepared coral food. Other than that, I wouldn't feed any other corals. They get their food from photosynthesis, why add the extra nutrients into the tank?

The question isnt weather its nessisary to feed corals, its weather its nessisary in a tank that keeps its nutrients (phytos and zoos). As it is a fact that corals need to be fed, period, (as MyFishEatYourFish will agree) yes they can survive without being directly fed because they get some nutrients when feeding the tank. BUT its been proven that a coral deprived of food (starile system) will grow very slowly or eventualy die, but when given food and deprived of light they survive much better. Though I cannot post a link to this as I read it quite a wile ago.

 

[MyFishEatYourFish]

algae scrubber skeptics?!?!?! if there was a completely enclosed canister version of the algae scrubber would you give it a try, because that's exactly what i'm working on!
sorry, not for this thread

kevin8888 agreed!!!
a good way to prove corals eat is see what they do when the lights turn off? do they retract? this would indicate more photosynthesis. or do they expand more, or even send out tentacles? this would indicate a coral that wants to eat badly enough that it risks more flesh out in the open. this is the case for most corals!