One of the difficulties in the maintenance of reef aquaria is the ability to provide consistent, nutritious, and usable food resources that help to reproduce the large amount of particulate food or zooplankton available on natural reefs. Late in the summer of 2003, Dennis Tagrin, of DT’s Plankton Farm, provided me with a food source he had been considering as a marketable product and asked for my analysis of its utility for reef aquaria.Under the microscope, the cell density of the product was extremely high, and the addition of 1ml of the eggs produced a high particle count in a 55-gallon reef tank (sufficient to feed every coral polyp several times over!). The eggs are approximately 40-50 microns in size, making them an excellent size for capture by corals and other filter feeding invertebrates.These oyster eggs have a very good nutritional profile, and appear to maintain their nutritional value over long periods of frozen storage. The eggs have a strong “fresh-ocean” smell, and elicit a strong feeding response from both fish and invertebrates. I greatly look forward to the regular availability of this product as a natural and beneficial plankton-substitute for my other reef systems. - Eric H. Borneman
this is from the firm that made it
