Looking for what "experienced reefers" have to say? The average longevity of hobbyists is only about 2 years so it's kind of difficult to get really good information to a question like this.
My 2 cents, what I have learned in 24+ years of keeping reef aquariums is that feeding the fish can actually cover a lot of invertebrate feeding that new hobbyists often read about. Coral are just a few of the thousands of invertebrates that
should be living in a
healthy system. Ideally we would like to have a system that feeds itself with the live food that occurs on the wild reef. This is very difficult to acheive but there are methods to increase the amount of live food in our systems.
In my experience, the kind of feeding that promotes food growth within the reef aquarium system includes frozen meaty foods with algae along with fresh algae. Algae(plants) is the basis of all life on earth. Yet the most important "food" we can feed our reef aquariums is Alkalinity(Alk), Calcium(Ca), Magnesium(Mg), Iodine and a few other trace elements that coral and inverts eat as they grow.
Gonna have to interrupt this post to go take care of something. In the meantime, read more about this topic in the thread linked below in my signature line. Not only is this topic covered in the Reefkeeping Tips but a discussion of how to do Alk, Ca and Mg dosing is there in that thread as well.
Aloha,
Mark
808-345-1049