Dosing/Feeding Coral

[matasw]

I've taken random recommendations from forums and people i've met. I have Iodine, Calcium Balance, Essential Elements, and Coralvite. I had no idea if I should be using all of these. A guy i met last week recommended dosing nothing at all and he did had quite a few yeras of experience and a nice reef. His theory was that the constant dosing and trying to keep everything as a certain level makes the water unstable sense the iodine,calcium, etc levels are always going up and down. Other people highly reccomende the Iodine for Xenia and the CoralVite/Essential elements to use just in general. I haven't dosed anything in a few weeks. I have the following:

Xenia
Kenya Tree
Orange Zoo
Green Star Polyp
Yellow Polyp
Two Harder corals? Monti's maybe?

It seems odd that I would need to dose all this stuff. I've been doing the iodine, coralvite and calcium balance about once a week the calcium balance I haven't used in about a month. I tested calcium about 6 weeks ago it was around 480 Last week I added the Zoo's, Both Poly's and the Monti's so now that I have a wider range of coral I want to make sure i'm caring for everything properly. Is there a supplement or food that I should be using for the corals that i'm not? Living Critters are as follows:

1 Turbo Snail
1 Astrea Snail
12 Tiny Hermit Crabs
1 Peppermint Shrimp
1 Green Chromis

I just got three damsels out of the tank last weekend, the only thing I feed is a small pinch of flakes once a day and bloodworms on occasion. Nitrates spiked to 20ppm, and ammonia to .50ppm about 10 days ago, I got my RO/DI last week and did a 50% water change which seems to have brought them down to about 5-10ppm.

Suggestions greatly appreciated :)

[kevin2000]

Unless you have a known deficiency then the general rule is that you don't need to add any of those supplements. Many would argue that those additives don't do anything positive and likely will deteriorate your water quality over time. In short ... save your money.

[Amphiprion]

Honestly, I would simply stick to calcium and alkalinity dosing, maybe magnesium (all of those three as testing warrants, of course).

[demonsp]

Well i notice that my larger poylps will eat the frozen food and my blastamoto I cant spell, will actually open his mounth and suck water in whene i add marine snow they also eat the frozen food. I just turn power head and pumps off to let food drift on them . also i think xenia and kena like lots of calcium which is replced with monthly water changes . And of coarse most like lots of light . gl :)

[matasw]

So should i put something in their other tahn flakes for the corals?

[Shiandy]

I feed my fish a good mix of foods, and find that the juices from the frozen meaty foods are great for the filter feeders and no feed suppliments are needed.

I do check my calcium / kh levels on a regular basis, this is really dependant on your system and stocking levels of calcium loving corals and algae's, but I find Calcium is consumed in my system, and although I do regular water changes every two weeks, I still need to dose to keep these levels up.

So I would say monitor your levels, and try to get a feel of how much Calcium is being used up, you may find your levels of Calcium stay up around 400-450 with regular water changes, and thus you have your answer.