Just like watching your fish swim to the surface for food, feeding your corals is one of the most fun parts of owning a saltwater aquarium. While most species of coral don’t need it, handfeeding them on occasion is a great way to encourage the growth of your more sensitive organisms. However, there is such a thing as feeding them too much, and, when you do, it can mean trouble for the rest of your tank. This is why overfeeding your corals is dangerous.
Reduced Water Quality
To begin, putting an abundance of food in the water can cause the overall water quality in your tank to deteriorate. With more nutrients in the water than your organisms can handle, the access is left to float around the aquarium. This can dilute certain chemical concentrations, making your water appear cloudy, and making the environment itself more difficult to keep clean. Because of this, overfeeding your corals often means that you need to perform increased water changes to balance out the chemical changes.
Raised Nitrate Levels
Speaking of which, overfeeding can also increase the nitrate levels in your ecosystem. Nitrates are essential to sustaining the growth of your specimens as well as any plants or invertebrates you keep. So, your tank will steadily use it up over time. However, it’s important to note that while regulated quantities aren’t dangerous, nitrates can overwhelm an ecosystem and spur excessive algae growth. Algae uses up all additional resources in your tank, eventually snuffing out your fish and corals in the process.
Faster Coral Expansion
If you aren’t battling algae growth, you’ll be struggling to manage the size of your corals. While fast-growing colonies don’t sound like a bad thing, they may outgrow their positioning in your tank. In more aggressive species, this can cause them to weed out other corals and make it more difficult for you to regulate your ecosystem. As such, this is another key reason why it’s dangerous to overfeed your corals.
Proper care is vital to keeping a well-balanced aquarium ecosystem. As such, we at World Wide Corals not only provide a diverse number of rare corals for sale, but also seek to educate beginner hobbyists on how to best maintain them. Our experts will work with you to answer any questions and help you find the perfect maintenance practices for your aquarium.
