I have a lot of faith in marine aquarists as a whole. If I didn’t, I would have stepped out of the hobby the first time I saw a wild coral reef. Many of us have experienced these beautiful undersea cities firsthand, and have made a commitment to care for our captive charges with appreciation and respect. The first step to achieving the goal of a sustainable aquarium is keeping your livestock healthy, so that you aren’t constantly replacing dead fish. In the previous two installments of this little series, I introduced some ideas about getting healthy livestock, acclimation and quarantine. Also, I discussed a reverse acclimation process that minimizes the time a fish is stuck within a shipping bag, as a drip line fills it with water. 
It is without a doubt that nutrition is by far the most vital link in the chain of long-term success as an aquarist. It goes deeper (no pun intended) than that. Imagine you are offered a thick, medium rare, porterhouse steak. You can practically taste the juices oozing from the sides. Yet the steak is sitting on a concrete driveway during the middle of July in Florida. Sure steak is appealing for those of us that eat meat, but eating off the ground isn’t. Often in our reefs we are expecting a wide variety of species to eat the same thing, the same way. By far, the most popular way to feed fish is to simply disperse a clump of food into the water column, and allow the current to spread it throughout the tank. Often it’s effective, yet it assumes that every species in your aquarium has the same feeding habits. Look at that mouth: Anyone familiar with marine fish can see that mouths come in all shapes, sizes and placements. Harlequin tuskfish have menacing teeth jutting out of a downturned mouth. Butterfly fish have small, plier like mouths that look like surgical instruments. Anthias have tiny mouths centered in their heads. Could this all be nature’s unique way of making fish diverse? Actually no, those mouths tell you a lot about your fish. 
Species like the anthias, with small mouths centered in their head are often mid-water plankton feeders. Those with down-turned mouths like that of the tuskfish are suited at grabbing food from the bottom. The precision jaws of the butterfly fish are apt at nabbing tiny prey items from deep crevices in the rock.… More:
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