Choosing foods appropriate for your saltwater or marine fish aquarium should pose little difficulty if you keep a few basic points in mind. Saltwater fish tend to be specialists when it comes to food. Quite a few vegetarians exist, for example. Some of them feed on many types of algae, others need a specific kind. Carnivores can usually be satisfied with a varied diet, but some feed only on specific classes of food, such as crustaceans.
Many predatory saltwater fish need the movement of living prey to stimulate their feeding response, and only learn to eat nonliving foods as a result of the aquarist’s efforts. I have already mentioned that species with strongly specialized feeding requirements, such as coral-eating butterflyfishes, should be avoided altogether. I provide feeding recommendations at various points throughout the book, usually when a given type of fish is first discussed.
Feeding Marine Invertebrates
Marine fish grab food and swallow it. Feeding them is straightforward. Invertebrates, on the other hand, provide some special challenges. Invertebrates exhibit a variety of feeding methods, from hunting to straining the surrounding water for particulate food items. As a result, they require captive diets tailored to those methods. Some soft corals, for example, rely entirely on the photosynthesis carried out by their symbiotic algae, and thus need no food at all provided lighting is sufficiently intense. The majority of corals also has symbiotic algae but nevertheless consume small particles of food when it is available. Some invertebrates feed almost continuously, others only at certain times of the day. Let’s consider each feeding strategy you are likely to encounter.
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