Pre-feeding for corals?

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LauraL

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Jan 1, 2009
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My LFS guy is recommending I start dosing in advance before buying coral. I've got Fiji live rock with nice coralline algae structures and one or two volunteer corals now.

I have a 29 biocube with T5s. The chemistry is perfect, but the salinity is a little low just yet - LFS keeps their fish at 1.018 and I'm trying to get a couple of fish in before moving up to inverts and corals.

I don't want to encourage red and green algae (and I've got plenty of both already). How soon before you add coral do you need to start feeding for it?

Also - I've got Liquid Reef on hand. Is that good, or are others better?

Thanks,
Laura
 

SubRosa

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Jul 3, 2009
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Is this the same guy who told you that the Chromis would be a good choice? NEVER dose without testing first, and be suspect of anyone who claims that keeping marine fish at 1.018 specific gravity has any benefit whatsoever besides decreased salt costs.
 

Branden_Pearson

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Jun 9, 2012
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I agree with subrosa slowly bring that salinity up to 1.025 or so and don't ever listen to this guy again. The only thing that would benefit from starting to feed now is algae so unless you want more algae don't add unneeded nutrients. Do you have a skimmer or run GFO? One of these could help control algae. The only thing to worry about before you add corals is your salinity and algae problem get those fixed because once you start feeding corals you will have a even harder time with algae


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Khemul

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Oct 14, 2010
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+2 SubRosa

Did you have any thoughts on the type of corals you wanted? Because it is rather impossible to preemptively dose without that knowledge. Granted preemptive dosing is a bit silly to begin with, unless you were planning on fully stocking the tank in one go...
 

greech

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May 13, 2009
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Unless you jam that biocube with SPS colonies, you probably will never need to dose unless you're only doing water changes once a month. Weekly 10 to 20% water changes using a decent salt mix should keep up with demand in a tank that size.

Liquid reef is not a good product IMO. If you do need to dose in the future, I would consider a 2-part on a tank that size.

If there is no livestock in the tank, go ahead and take the SG up to 1.025 and measure SG using a reliable instrument. Once there, test your water for Mg, Ca and alkalinity.

As for feeding (which I don't consider the same as dosing), there are lots of ways to accomplish this. Blindly dumping in particulate foods is not they way to go unless you are doing a non-photosynthetic tank. Target feeding large polyp corals is a much better way to get food to them without polluting your tank. Many corals (including most LPS) that we keep don't have to be fed. That isn't to say that feeding doesn't benefit them but there is no need to feed corals on a daily or even weekly basis. Again, there are exceptions to this but you probably won't even (or shouldn't) attempt the types of corals that require that level of care until you are more experienced. Even then, you will likely want to avoid them simply because of the level of effort involved to keep them alive.

Keep it simple and enjoy the hobby.
 

authmal

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Aug 4, 2011
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I don't know, feeding for something that's not in the tank, and may not be for some time, just seems very silly. I could see trying to cultivate some algae before getting some algae eaters, but that just doesn't seem to be your intent. It seems to me that your LFS is more worried about getting a sale, than in making everyone, including the fish, happy.

Pretty much every time I go in to my LFS at a busy, I see someone being told they can't do/have what they want. A few months ago, a guy wanted to put stiphodons in with his angels and rams. He was told no because stiphodons like the higher flow. A few weeks ago, a lady wanted to buy some discus to put into her well established 75. With goldfish. Unheated. She was told no. They do a good job of explaining why, and offering alternatives.

It just seems that your LFS either doesn't care about what they're selling, or they just don't know, or they're interested in selling you what they know will fail, so you can come back in and buy something else. I'd recommend doing research independent of their advice, because so far, it seems questionable. Ask people here, ask multiple different LFS, hit up google and read multiple articles, whatever. I must've read 250 articles on saltwater set up and researched 3 or 4 dozen species of fish for my future saltwater setup. It's seriously cutting in to my game playing time. While I'm pretty sure that my stocking will be perfectly compatible, as far as fish species and counts are concerned at least, it took a lot of looking to get to that point.
 

ThatNewFishGuy

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May 4, 2010
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Hey subrosa

Just wondering what strength do u recommend to keep the blues and whites on for an lps/softie tank with sps to come one day. My tank is 24 in deep and I have the fixture 6 in off my sandbed. I started off at about 40 percent blue 30 percent white.

Also, have u noticed any variance in the colors of ur corals since u started using the fixture?

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SubRosa

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Jul 3, 2009
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If you take your time increasing the intensity you can go as bright as you want. What I ended up doing was increasing my blues slowly to 100%, but I left the whites down around 80% because of appearance. The one thing I did notice was that an orange Ricordea turned green.
 

LauraL

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Jan 1, 2009
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You all are a great help - thanks a lot! Yeah, I *don't* think this guy has the foggiest idea what he's talking about. And yes, I'm definitely going for the easy corals. Not planning to add them for a little while yet, though - I want to let the tank get totally stable first.

Re salinity - I've got my tank at about 1.022 and am planning to slowly let it get up to 1.024. But I've still got a couple of fish to buy, and they're coming out of 1.018. How long should acclimation take? I don't have a drip set-up, but can do by hand - just don't know how long I should give the fish.
 

LauraL

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Jan 1, 2009
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@authmal - trust me, I'm all about researching this stuff. I've kept FW for many years, but I know nothing about SW. (And holy cow - I do NOT need to cultivate algae!!! :)
 
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