Mud trace elements and critters collected for corals foods and general needs.

One of the club members has now twice collected some mud for his marine aquarium and reminded me of how I used to feed my corals in years gone by so I am back into it for a while until the corals get to much out of hand.

The area this is collected in is a trusted area very near all forms of corals so the potential for trace elements is high there.

When collecting it I make sure it is below the lowest tide so that substrate never achieves a few inches near the surface or actually breaks the surface.

I hold a bucket on the mud and scoop it at the opening of the bucket until heaps of really muddy water is in the bucket.

Then lift the bucket up, let it settle for a few seconds and the pore the contents in to the other bucket and over and over again until the second bucket is full.

That’s what I take home, put an air stone in the bucket for the length of time it takes for the water to begin to smell, then toss it and get some more.

When adding it to the tank I move the contents of the bucket around to dirty the water fully and take a cup of that water from the bucket and swap a cup from the tank and add the muddy water to the tank!

The tank life reacts very positively to this way of adding trace elements and benthic food source.


This the tank as it looks when I add the local mud.


This is the tank the day earlier before I started adding the mud.


This the tank four days after the mud has been added up to 6 times per day.
All the corals polyps are extended most of the time and the colours are far more intense.


This is an example of how they love what’s in the mud to feed on.