How to Target Feed Corals Without Polluting Your Tank

Winter in Brisbane means slower metabolisms across most reef tanks. Water temps sit a touch lower, corals feed less aggressively, and any food that misses its target lingers longer before bacteria or your skimmer catch it. That lag is exactly when target feeding starts fouling water instead of growing coral. Get the timing and technique right and you can dose Reef Roids or Reef Pulse straight onto polyps without spiking phosphate the next morning.

Broadcast feeding is easy but wasteful. Target feeding puts food exactly where a coral's mouth or polyps are, in a small enough dose that nothing drifts off to rot in your rockwork. It takes an extra five minutes per feed, but it is the difference between visible polyp extension and a tank that needs constant nutrient export.

What you need

• A turkey baster or 20-60ml syringe (no needle)
• Coral food such as Reef Revolution Polyp Feast, Ocean Nutrition Coral Pellets, or Vitalis SPS Coral Food
• A small mixing cup with tank water
• A skimmer you can pause for 20 to 30 minutes
• Return pump or wavemaker you can dial back briefly

Step by step

1. Turn off your skimmer. Any food particles pulled straight into the collection cup are wasted and skimmed straight out as waste, defeating the purpose. Switch it off at the powerpoint before you mix anything.
2. Cut flow, don't kill it. Drop your wavemaker to a low setting or pause pulse mode. You want gentle movement so food stays near the coral rather than getting fired across the tank.
3. Mix a small slurry. Add a pinch of Reef Roids or a squeeze of Reef Pulse into 50-100ml of tank water in your cup. Let it hydrate for a minute so it does not clump when it hits the syringe.
4. Draw up and aim close. Fill the syringe, get the tip within a centimetre or two of the coral's mouth or polyp mass, and release slowly. For SPS with small polyps, tiny repeated squirts work better than one big cloud.
5. Watch for polyp response. Zoas, euphyllia and softies will visibly reach for food within a minute or two. If a coral isn't responding, move on rather than dumping more food hoping it will.
6. Leave flow and skimmer off for 15-20 minutes. This gives corals time to actually capture and digest before anything gets swept away or skimmed out.
7. Restart flow first, skimmer second. Bring wavemakers back to normal, wait five minutes, then switch the skimmer back on so any genuine leftover waste gets exported.

Keep the water column clean between feeds

Even careful target feeding adds some dissolved organics. Running Continuum Bacter Clean M or dosing amino acids like Reef-Pure alongside your feeding schedule helps bacteria process leftover nutrients before they show up as nuisance algae or a phosphate creep on your test kit. If you are feeding SPS heavily for colour and growth, pairing target feeds with AcroPower style amino dosing gives corals building blocks without relying on more food volume, which is really the whole point of doing this properly.

Check your coral food range for options suited to LPS, SPS and softies, and browse protein skimmers if yours is undersized for the bioload you are now feeding more precisely.

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