Interesting Live Food Test

[cameron]

I am sure many of you have read this already but the conclusions from this test are interesting:

Live food may incur higher production costs in the form of labor and equipment than artificial food; however, this study showed that the increase in colony growth and survival may be an acceptable trade-off. Although no conclusions can be made about the artificial food and its effects on coral health and water quality, it is apparent that artificial food did not promote coral growth, rather only algal growth. In my experience, substantial algal growth may be detrimental to the health and survival of juvenile corals. My observations are consistent with other studies on the growth and survivorship of juveniles on the reef (Sato 1984; Babcock and Mundy 1996).

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[nishant3789]

great article cam. its interesting that for all the negative views of artemia's relative lack of nutrition, that particular scientist still used it. I am guessing he used the newly hatched artemia, and chose the particular live food due to its ease of collection.

 

[cameron]

Ease of collection and they still have their yolks. You basically have to use them quickly or fatten them up with a vitamin supplement.

 

[nishant3789]

how big are cyclopes compared to newly hatched artemia?

 

[nishant3789]

and even though the article advocates live food, there are still very few true coral foods available that are live. By true coral foods i mean zooplankton essentially. As we talked about before live DTs isnt really coral food apparently. So what are our choices? newly hatched artemia, and what else? rotifiers? bottled copepods? i suspect mysis is way too large for most sps, and that too can be difficult to collect on a regular basis.

 

[george]

Interesting article. I'd be interested in seeing a match up between live foods vs. something like Kent's Zooplex. I've seen some tanks that get spectacular results with Kent's Zooplex and Phytoplex.

 

[kwl1763]

Very interesting. Maybe time for me to start hatching those baby brine again!!