During the initial wave of pandemic-related stay-at-home mandates, many reefkeepers found more time than normal to pay attention to the hobby they loved. Richard Ross was busy in his Secret Home Lab, working with baby corals, a story he shares in the forthcoming January/February 2021 issue of CORAL.
Still, even while nursing newly settled corals, he also had time to document feeding time in his display aquarium, a 150-gallon (567-l) tank that is part of a network of connected aquariums both in the family living room and the Secret Home Lab in the San Francisco Bay area.
Currently, Ross describes the reef community as “SPS on the top half and LPS/NPS on the bottom half.” He explains, “I feed a lot, as this video shows. Corals need to eat! My philosophy is that algae is mainly controlled by herbivores, not water quality, and this system runs with nitrate around 50 ppm and phosphate around between 0.2 and 1.4 ppm.
“I like this video because it shows the NPS opening as they sense food in the water. This tank is designed to have lots of overhangs and caves so the fish feel comfortable, and the only bummer about the tank is that it is hard to see the depth and caves in the video.”
The video documents an extended feeding session that takes place over the course of an hour, condensed down to eight minutes. As you watch, Ross says, “First is a PE Mysis flake feed. A little while later I add a chuck of PE Calanus to the auto feeder (not shown). Then a mix of PE Calanus, Hikari Mysis, and LRS foods are added at intervals. The video ends with a few minutes of the reef in silence with all the polyps open and feeding.”
Enjoy 8 Minutes With Rich Ross’s SPS/NPS Reef—Watch Now!
