High Tide Aquatics

Let talk chalice

This colony arrived for me today!

682350414_3Vjs9-O.jpg
 
glee said:
Imo the word true isn't needed. If it's an undata it's an undata. Do ppl use fake to describe a coral? Any way, sorry to get off topic. "presses button" resume thread.
Click to expand...

well when it was named people where calling another montipora species undata and when Eddy found his that was spot on the the pic in Veron's COT.... it was a no brainer name, the true undata as in the true monipora undata :)
 
When do you guys feed your chalice and what are they care requirements? There is only one chalice that I like and its the watermelon :p which no one has or no one willing to give up without me giving up an arm and leg.
 
I vary it up. The 3 main meals are; small bits of shrimp/ clam/ mussle/ fish food , other days it's cyclopeeze, other days mysis shrimp. I regularly add Reef Nutrition products; arctipods & oyster feast which I'm sure the chalice gets some of.
 
There's a lot of info out there on the subject. #1 you can actually damage the tissue of the coral depending on what type of food you are using, If the food doesn't make it into the digestive tract it can "burn" the tissue. Most importantly corals are designed to feed over the course of time capturing small particles of food out of the water column, they are simply not designed for the intake of large particles in rapid fashion which leads to pseudo feces and a net loss in energy.
 
GreshamH said:
tuberider said:
Spot feeding chalice is a no no, just let the animal capture the food.
Click to expand...

:)
Click to expand...

+1...I used to spot feed every corals in the shop when we first had it, and then we realized how dumb we were to do that since we had too many mouths to fee. Now, we just broadcast feed all the tanks now with Rotifeast and Cyclop-eeze. After that, my IQ went up by +5, compared to the corals... :bigsmile:
 
tuberider said:
Spot feeding chalice is a no no, just let the animal capture the food.
Click to expand...
Good info to know! So many people spot feed them but that of course doesn't make it the best practice. I'll have to adjust my approach. As far as other LPS such as acans, candycane, favia, it it best to not spot feed those as well and just broadcast feed?
 
Since I know your a super smart guy, you must have some pretty intelligent corals Robert :)
 
Hm, that's interesting, I will have to read up on this.

I find that the problem with broadcast feeding is pollution of the water column... I guess it would depend on the size/type of food you feed to your corals. And of course the type of coral, mouth size, etc.
 
Hers' the scoop Jason, it's not about quantity of food in the water column, it's about duration. I feed every night over the course of hours, not just in one shot, it allows the corals to take in the food slowly without having a a large quantity of food floating around. I reckon that with the shut down of the skimmer due to the RN food I get about 5 hours of feeding time on the same quantity of food as people would put in their tanks all at once.
 
Ah, I see. Do you put it all in at once and shut down the skimmer for 5 hours? Or do you somehow slowly dose the food for 5 hours continuously?

I have to confess that I have yet to see negative effects from spot feeding chalices. That said, I haven't conducted an A-B comparison, so I can't conclude anything about spot feeding...
 
It's not about "seeing", it's about the animals physiology, they simply are not designed to eat a big pulse of food.

I use a turkey baster and a plastic cup of chow that gets a squirt every half hour or so (whenever I think about it). If you use RN products your skimmer is shutdown due to the lipids in the food, even a little squirt in a cup of water will shut it down for at least an hour, no need to turn the skimmer off.
 
Not to be argumentative, but just talking out some thoughts...

Just because an animal is not designed to live or feed in a certain way doesn't necessarily mean that doing something unnatural is detrimental to the creature.

i.e: Grass isn't meant to be sprinkled with fertilizer, but doing so helps it grow faster. Farmed poultry is force fed foods that are unnaturally high in certain proteins and vitamins for faster growth. (Although admittedly lots of other bad things are done to poultry that cause other problems...) Extra long light cycles and hydroponic systems are used on indoor farmed plants, etc...

I do agree however, that overfeeding is detrimental to some corals. I've seen the 'faux poo' effect as well. Perhaps it's not so much that spot feeding is definitively detrimental, but rather that overfeeding is?

For small mouthed chalices, I tend to feed crushed flake which has relatively lower mass. Only for larger polyped corals like acans and blastos do I feed mysis. Generally, I try to gauge how 'full' a polyp is and avoid overstuffing it. :p
 
Good discussion. You hear about so many people spot feeding and claiming outstanding growth. It seemed there were the spot feeders and the people who didn't spot feed because of the time involved, not necessarily because of the big pulse of food problem. What Jeremy says makes logical & biological sense since it more closely replicates nature. It would be nice to know if a comparison has been done on spot feeding vs. broadcast to see what differences play out over time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top