Candy Cane

[KidNano]

I'm new to Candy canes. Are the strings coming out of these polyps how they eat? If not what are they for. They were all out like crazy last night and I thought maybe it was croaking on me and then this morning all is back to normal. I figured they were just feeding but not sure.

 

[reefman23]

Yep. Those are the feeding tentacles. I fed them very small pieces of meaty frozen foods, shrimp, cyclopeeze, etc. Then just make sure none of the tissue is in contact with the LR where it can become damaged.

Jesse

 

[KidNano]

OK.... they came out just after I scrapped all the algea off the front and sides and after a water change and a dose of DT's. I just wasn't sure if they were mad or glad about everthing I was doing. John and Dawn says don't worry about feeding as their is already enough food in the water for them. or maybe that was just not to worry about dosing with a calcium buffer. what are your thoughts on that.

 

[JeffDubya]

While it's true that most LPS you might keep in your tank can both extract nutrients from the water and from the zooxanthellae inside their polyps, it never hurts to target feed. If you want growth, then target feeding is important. My trumpet/candy cane corals love chunks of silversides and they are hearty eaters. I do this weekly.

As for "dosing" with a "calcium buffer" what you should actually do is use a calcium and KH test kit and then dose as required to keep these at optimum levels. I personally love the Sea Chem system, they have a great online calculator. Just enter the volume of your tank and your current readings and it will tell you exactly how much to dose.

http://seachem.com/support/DoseCalculat ... ulator.swf