Just what this hobby needs...factual data for the win. Just what I needed to see before I get my sump and reef set up. Thank you.

As a biologist and reef tank enthusiast myself, I got to say this is one of the most informative videos I have seen lately. In this hobby we often have nothing better to rely on then our gut feeling. I think it’s great when we can back up our theories with well thought out experiments. Thanks for sharing!

I've been keeping coral tanks for over 10'years and the best tank I had was skimmerless, im seriously thinking of going back :)

Well done! any research is better than advertisements for products

Keep this good research going man. This is awesome stuff. Your comment about companies selling things to strip the water then another to ad things back seems very accurate. Bravo. Please keep up these fantastic and informative videos.

I love your videos! Thanks for your efforts and hard work.

thank you for this great video! I always learn so much from you so please keep the videos coming!

Excellent that someone posts info based on science. Nice! Thank you!

Thanks for all your effort to create such a great informative video! Thanks for sharing!

I am very thankful for this video, based on serious articles and hard data, something difficult to find because unfortunately the web is full of “gurus “ and inaccurate or straight false information. I am a new suscriber to this channel. 👌🏼

Incredible job going over the literature. Would love to see more research with LPS and corals that have a prominent feeding response

Every tank condition is different and corals as well, the corals in my reef gobble up spectrum pellets mix with reef roids . Always positive reactions so I will continue to feed.

Very true. We used to lived in Hawaii, I don’t have much knowledge about reeftank, but what we do is simply have coral lights, mixing salt, feeding the fish and we have sea water tank that we are using to do water change. We only do mix commercial salt for emergency. And our corals are thriving. I just learned a lot later that I thought I was doing all wrong when We moved here in the mainland and I learned the expensive ways. And now I think we were doing it just right.

Thank you for this, very informative. Good to see someone putting these commercial foods to the test.

Thank you for this Educational & Enlightening Video. You have just re-affirmed was has been told to me over and over again by people who have successful Reef tanks. Natural nutrition, Live Nutrition and limited filtration is key to Coral Health. No Additives needed if you have the basics in place. For the n-th time in 25 years I'm stopping all the Additives, removing my Overfiltration Media, and getting back to adding my Live Copepods again..... To get back to Natural Coral Feeding and maintaining my Water QUALITY, not Water CLARITY..

Facts are the way, it purges all the public assumptions and BS's... Thanks for the video!

EBR - Evidence Based Reefing - great video, need more of this. Thank you

Very well presented information and qiute surprising too. Something to think about next time we buy coral food and additives. Thank you for time to research and share.

I totally agree with your comment towards the end of the information being given out to push us to buy more bottles. They have a N and P removal product on one shelf and a N and P additive on the shelf above. You can buy both or buy neither and end up with the same result.

A great video, I’ve been experimenting my self. I not experienced and had algie problems from trying to feed corels. Mainly zoas so far I’ve scaled everything back I now use reefroids once a week but after the tub is finished and going to only add poly booster. Since trying this everything seems to be growing great with lots off new bud forming, algie still a problem at the moment but this was defiantly what was missing from my system.

I do believe your final thoughts about nutrients. I have a 10 months old 10 gallon reef tank. And it’s been a wide rode learning how to be successful with it. And now that I’m not trying to deplete nitrates and phosphate in the tank, all my corals seem to be doing well

Thank you for the enlightening session. Very useful information.

First and foremost Amro thank you for taking time out to discuss the valuable literature. I completely agree with your findings. Corals live and thrive in the oceans under raw seawater which has tons of nutrients and live food and this totally proves the theory you shared. With this being clear we have another problem and that is how many fishes you need which are enough to provide the required nutrient levels. Of course it will depend on different tank sizes BUT if the tank sizes limits the number of fishes you add that means it also limits the amount of food waste (nutrients) you will need. I think this theory works in much more matured tanks wherein the bacteria and all sorts of live food is populating at enough pace to feed corals. I think in the beginning you need to still provide the corals with some nutrients in terms of added food so as to allow them to establish themselves in the earlier stage which can be obtained either by artificial food sources OR feeding your fishes quite often..Likewise i have also removed filter floss and filter socks from my system and things have been looking great....once again thank you so very much for sharing this wealth of information.

Good video. Very informative.

This needs to be everywhere! I had to search to find this. I wish someone very influential would bring this to everyone attention.

Always an interesting topic. 😎👍

Appreciate this video. Thanks for taking the time to hunt down these studies. IMO, we run our tanks too clean. I made that mistake for a long time. I currently don’t even run a skimmer. Shocking right? We’ll.. I don’t see the need as the NO3 is depleted. I dose a food grade NaNO3 to maintain a level between 3-5 ppm. My PO4 (from feeding) is about 0.8 ppm. So IMO I don’t need a skimmer. Back 10 years ago my corals were pale and would STN a lot. Tank was just too clean. My buddy’s tank constantly outgrew mine by 7 fold. I found out later after testing his water that he was flood feeding. One day his nutrients were moderately elevated and the next day I’d test and they were zero. We traded a lot of frags which is why I was able to test his water frequently. He would flood feed the tank and then perform a large water change to export after the corals were fed. So even when the tank was near zero- the corals had already eaten and had all the nutrients they needed and were not affected by zero levels. I thought this was actually genius and now I understand why it was working for him. I did not incorporate this into my regimen. However, I do keep plenty of nutrients in the water column and do water changes when necessary. Over and over I’m finding that the more nutrients in the tank the better growth I’m getting. Look at Sanjay’s tank for example. He’s NO3 and PO4 are very elevated, yet his corals look amazing. It’s all about letting the tank mature until it can handle large amounts of food/ nutrients without growing nuisance algae. The bottom line is that corals need to eat something and common sense says we all do better with nutrition. I don’t know, maybe I’ll start flood feeding the tank. I think the key is to get a reef stable and then slam it with food and export the waste while maintaining appropriate numbers to prevent plague algae outbreaks.

Very interesting! Thanks for share

really good watch, nice work!

Great information. We need more scientific peer reviewed articles.

What you're talking about in this video reminded me of my 2-3 year stint with ZEOVIT. Essentially you strip the tank of anything and have to add it back in. While some people had success, I had nothing but constant problems. The best looking tank I ever had was when I was in college and I didn't know anything and just slapped it together. I agree our tanks are too clean. I'd love to see a study of someone using the "bio-in-a-bottle" products like prodibio and microbacter7 and their effects on coral growth.

Great video once again. So difficult to find peer reviwed data that is specific to closed sytems. However if one searches more proficiently (I use research gate with my academic logon) there has been very interesting data available for a number of years. In my reef store I use the motto “Modern Sustainablr Reefing” All of the advice and products I recommend are based on scientific understanding. However the most popular products I sell are those that I can give no recommendation. If a supplier is not willing to divulge the basic principles and constituants of their product, Then the only evidance one can make an informed decision on is anecdotal evidance. Unfortuntely anecdotal evidance often contains wide variations in results. Some will se posative reaction some neutral and some negative. This is down to a lack of understanding of the complex nature of closed sytems. Unless one can reproduce results consistantly across a wide range of controls then the data is virtually useless. This is why scientific reviewed data is so much mor valuable. Subscribed to your channel and will recommend to my customers. I just hope they will take your advice, as they seem to be reluctant to take mine. Instead they are convinced by manufacturers and articles that the newest product is the answer. This in itself can lead to brand switching and instability. You hit the nail on the head with the second paper. In marine biology we understand the vital importance of bacteria with regards coral metabolics. Bacteria is the area we should all be looking at. Thankfull Dr Cristoph in Austria is working along side Aquabihome with the facility to DNA test our aquarium waters. Keep up the great videos, Best wishes Tony Thompson, Sustainable Marine Aquatics.

I went to filter floss and cup. Also dont think enough people tweak their skimmer enough, by running a dryer skim you keep more of that nutrients without giving up gas exchange and if nutrients get too high then increase the skim a bit.

Thank you for this Educational & Enlightening Video.

Awesome information just starting a nano tank a few months a go been do small water changes once a week and my coral looked horrible all week then Thursday thur Sunday they opened everyday. It’s totally makes sense to feed the fish everyday and let their waste feed the coral just like in the sea. 🤯 I’ve been running my tank tooo clean I was just about to order coral food thank you again. I’m going to let the tank get a little dirty and see how the coral continues to look.

Solid information... thank you for doing this video!

Great video, very interesting. Products get pushed all the time, and we obey to the 2%. Interested to see what further changes you did to your tank and what affects were found

This is awesome info. This has big impacts as to the equipement I get and how I want to run my tank. I like the idea of growing live phyto down the track but this is great backup for those, like me, who see WWC feeding fish so often and not bothering with the coral. I do note this seemed like SPS specific. Also a lot of those Millis are collected near shore in Australia get all that runoff from the cane fields. Still I think your probably onto something and are starting the next trend in the industry will be bad for coral food producers ;)

Very innteresting, thank you!

Hi my friend,Thanks a lot for this very enriching articles summary!What would be your recommendations for having not "so clean" water reef tank - regarding mechanical and biological filtration, any insights regarding our skimmers? are those maybe too efficient? You mention that after removing filter sock you saw some additional acropora growth... As mentioned in my previous messages I seek for finding ways to "soil" my too clean water and beside of having increasing the number of food distributions and have a more diverse food (that is doesn't seem to really influencing) should it be only by manually adding nutrients as P or N?

In my experience I have noticed That unfiltered water does have a positive on corals.... this is very helpful information thank you!..

Great information. Thank you so much.

Great information, thanks for sharing!

Thank you taking the time to use research to provoke discussion. Did anyone else notice the redfield ratio was closest in raw seawater and if Artemis added P. Then that ratio would have been spot on. I also noted N in the form of aminos was valued like what we get in acropower and bio enhance. I don't feed roids for acros but do for LPS and looks better next day so very supportive of more research in this area on other corals. Personally I want to add clean water not viruses and add the right things. Maybe driving this the hobby $ could help save our reefs too.

Bravo! science based evidence FTW. This answered my debate for a protein skimmer on my nano many thanks!

Great research and scientific proof, not only feeding coral but also maintaining a saltwater reef tank. You mentioned that you saw greater extension on your coral after removing your filter sock(s). Were you able to find any positive or negative long term results from this? or have you experimented with this idea of not filtering the water for better results?

Great info thanks for sharing 👍

That was super informative, thank you

Great info. Subbed!

Excellent video. In the video you said you use reef roids and then at the end you said youre thinking of stopping. Just wondering if you have stopped and also if youre going to do another update in say 30 days to show any changes?

Very good video. I've read the first article a long time ago and from personal experience being an sps nut, having 0 NO3 or PO4 is not good. I've been dosing nitrates and amino acids back into the system and using biopellets minimally just the manage spikes but still provide some bacterial source.

Very helpful and impressive thank you

Looking at your beautiful tank which shows such great results from whatever you’re doing: 1. I don’t feel so bad now for having NO3 at around 10 and PO4 at around 0.14 - more importantly, I don’t feel such an urge to get them lower; 2. I stopped fluffing my sandbed when my tank had it’s near-crash 10 days ago, thinking I didn’t want to stir things up and possibly add to whatever the problem was. I’m going to start doing that again daily like I used to so that whatever is organic and decomposing can become available to the corals that might eat it; 3. I’m no longer going to feel guilty for being lazy about feeding my tank with the several different types of commercial powdered foods I have (a couple of which were included in the studies you showed). Instead, see #2. 😁 4. I’m going to keep my filter cups with filter floss in them just so my sump doesn’t collect quite so much material that will accumulate and pose a potential gas-release issue when I disturb it during cleanup (which I strongly suspect was the cause of the near-crash). At the same time, I’ll continue my new routine of using a small powerhead to keep things stirred up down there to reduce said accumulation. Keeping the stuff suspended might allow some of it to return to the display tank for use by the corals....🤔 I loved this video! It has really made me think. I appreciate your analysis of the studies, putting them in the context of our own tanks. I haven’t had much time lately to watch videos but I’m going to go and watch your first video about nitrate and Phosphate. 👍🏻👍🏻

Great video! I got two questions. Have you stopped dosing particulate foods and how do you feel about liquid foods like AA and coral vitalizer etc. I know this will be your personal opinion, but I'm interested!

Hi very nice video mate good point about feed the coral 👍

Great Video! Thank you

Quite an eye opener.

How is it shocking that powdered food made by some guys in their basement wouldn't beat water straight from the living oceans where corals have thrived for thousands of years in spite of humans?

Very nice video man

Thanks that was great information. Thanks again.

Thank you for the Video... Very enlightening

Respect.great video

Fascinating presentation. Can you share with us what us your current filtration set up?

So where do we draw the line? How much filtration is enough? What then is a sweet spot combination in filtration? Also, where is the threshold in PPM for Nitrates and Phos where coral growth suffers? Watched both of your videos and they mention elevated levels but what exactly are those levels.

Thanks for the vid! Have you seen any literature on amino acids?

Thanks for a VERY well researched video. I have been feeding dried coral foods and I'm generally disappointed with color and growth. As a result of this video, I am considering switching to live food (e.g. Algae Barn's products). It immediately raises the question of skimming. I think I'll try feeding live and leaving my skimmer off for 12 house, then run it the remaining 12 hours each day. Thoughts?

What a great video! Perhaps someone can answer a question of mine: I've got a 6 month old reef, lots of fish (which I feed generously every day) and I've seen great coral growth, especially with SPS. The only issue is on some of the rocks GHA has gotten up to 0.5" thick. Turbo snails and hermits won't touch it. Is this just a side effect of a maturing tank? I'm assuming once the coraline algae covers the rocks with time the GHA will be less prevalent. I would appreciate any advice you may have!

Great video. I wish I had this video 10 years ago when I had pale acros and friends would tell me to add more GFO to “color” them up. Buahahahaaa

Thanks for sharing , is there any study known about the effects of feeding with phytoplankton?

I used natural seawater collected from shore for my old tank but stopped for my new one but might start to add it again because of this vid think you

I don't run a skimmer for several reasons. It is an extra piece of equipment, it will take out more than fish waste, such as bacteria and other microphone and phlora which are potential coral food. I learned about the ecosystem method of a backyard pond and so I have tried to look at safekeeping in a similar way.

Thanks @AmroAzul TV

Great Information.

Those the study ever talk about polyp extension? I see some people have polyp extension all day. Did they have polyp extension when feeding? Just wondering if feeding at night something like reef roids would be beneficial since polyps would be out trying to catch food. Thanks.

Awsome! keep at it.

Very interesting thanks for that 🙏

hey man who much time in a week you feed your corals ? and what mount (grams) of food you put in tank ?

very good information..

Good job great video 🤙

And there’s me thinking 🤔 I’m doing it wrong with two canister filters and a uv 😂great Tank👍 .Andrew 🇬🇧

With any coral, consistency is key, so I wonder how researchers can generalize results when they are using one set of water, light, and tank (live rock, fish, other inverts, etc.) parameters. I’m glad you discussed the deficiency and confounding variable problem at the end of your video. I am curious if perhaps research into coral metabolism would yield even better results. Does anyone know which enzymes different corals exist and how, exactly, they digest food, be it live or synthetic?

Based on the way the experiment was conducted. I wouldnt expect the phytoplankton based foods to do anything for the corals they dont really eat phyto its ment to feed sponges,tunicates, feather dusters. But most importantly copepods, isopods and amphipods etc. The seawater is already full of zooplankton and microplankton. I think tanks that use skimmers and very fine mechanical filtration results would be very different and could benefit from dosing.

I feed reef nutrition foods, phyto and rotifeast! Hoping they help, maybe not, just another way for us to spend more money, I do believe copepods and such are really good, started a refuge a few weeks ago,!

The one comment I would make is that we all know that SPS corals do not respond well to changes in their environment. Light, chemistry or nutrition. It usually takes an SPS at least 3 months (usually much more) to really start growing after we get them into our tank. As such I believe the value of 45 day or 12 weeks experiment which essentially changed the corals nutrition is of limited value.

Thank you for such a great video, I've been thinking about this too recently and think the foods have come about from the old theory that everyone needed 0 nitrates and phosphates, now days I think that we are almost sterilizing the water with skimmers, carbon and filter media amd wonder how much of it is needed, I do believe that a natural phyto diet and aminos are of benefit though

Dude. You are reading (or should be) from a script. So there is ZERO reason for all the “ahhs” and “uhhs). Info is great and truly helps reefers like myself. Been doing it about 25 years and there’s no reason to not learn new and better ways!

Wow, so nice to have interesting informative videos on youtube. I have used reef roids with my LPS and found growth and colouration changes... I noticed the research focused exlusively on SPS... Wonder if theyd respond differently?

Thanks amro how often do you clean your sump? And how do you do it? Thanks

I'm curious about live phytoplankton ? Your thoughts.

Overall, I wonder if directly feeding the end product ie the macromolecules like Amino Acids (red seas AB+ or acropower), peptids etc would be more beneficial than feeding corals foods such as reef roids to start with. Also the addition of "live" phytoplankton. Not the bottled stuff.

Just got into the hobby. I started my tank a little less than 3 months ago with raw sea water from my local beach and dive spot here at peanut Island in Palm Beach Florida (just because it's easier for me than mixing salt mix into rodi water) and have been doing most of my water changes with raw sea water. Results so far have been great. For filtration, I'm Using filter floss, carbon, purigen, and no skimmer. Already have significant Coraline algae growth all over the tank and my SPS, LPS, and Softies are also doing great.

Over filtration yes, I find it funny we put all this filtration, skimmers etc on our tanks, then we go and BUY all the minerals etc that the filtration has taken out and we put them back in our tanks, only for the filtration to taken out again, there's got to be a better and cheaper way to keep a marine tank.

I feed oyster eggs once a week since my Zoas seem to like it. I don’t run socks either but have an oversized skimmer and big fish so lots of fish poop. Only other additive is Acropower dosed nightly. I have found that PE on Acros is definitely better when dosing it. Just my 2 cents

Perhaps we should run a dirtier tank until we see negative results

As long as you keep your nitrates and phosphates parameters on the low end you are good to go. I never do water changes, my skimmer usually is on but I lower it's level so I get the oxigen benefit and PH. To control Nitrates I use Debitrate reactor and PO3 I use Rowaphos. I always had success this way and I keep things simple.

hi, what about ur filtration system what u doing now without socks,one video of what u use under the tank thanks

Can going sock-less be the way to healthier corals??? Awesome and informative 👍🏾👍🏾

Im having problems with acro growth at the moment. They look great but a bunch of them are barely growing. I do water changes every 2 weeks. I feed them once a week with reef rouds but not every week cuz I dont really see or think that they actually eat it. I have tons of micro organisms in my fuge. I e got 2 or 3 kinds of pods that i can see with my eyes. I have these little shrimp that look like mysis shrimp. Also amphipods, limpets, baby snails, like 2 or 3 different kinds, some muscles witch idk whefe they came from. I hope you see this and can possibly give me a little input or advice. Id greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

Thank you for sharing this great information with us!

Great video, what do you feed your tank?