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Hiromi
05/02/2000, 09:39 AM
If i 'm feeding my corals and fishes
with

-mixture of 1 cube of frozen brine shrimp
minced mixed with about 15ml of shrimp based liquid food.

tank size is 40gallon with a 5gallon refugium
mostly soft corals and some LPS

How many times a week should i go to avoid over feeding and overloading the tank?

Thanks
Hiromi

Anemone of the State
05/02/2000, 01:44 PM
I'll no doubt start some controversy by saying this, but from what I have seen people tend to underfeed. I feed my 3 fish in my reef tank once or twice per day, and a fair pile of food. I have two maroon clowns and a purple tang. I also have a large number of hermit crabs and some shrimp that scavenge anything uneaten. Everything thrives, and nitrates are zero. As long as all the food gets eaten, I don't think you are overfeeding. None of the corals I have specifically require food, but it is possible they eat brine shrimp or small food fragments, and definitely like Selcon that washes off food that I have soaked it into. I tripled the amount of food I fed my fish after my purple tang got ich in january. It is fine now, and my nitrates went down to zero, not up. Now I feed as much food as I can get them to eat in 5 minutes.

ReefDad
05/02/2000, 02:17 PM
I'm a proponent of heavy feeding - with one caution: IMO what you end up feeding is mostly the unseen micro-fauna/flora in the tank, and this can take time to grow - but once it's there, heavy feeding will keep it thriving all the way up the food chain including the macro algeas which can be harvested to export excess nutrients.

So, the caution is with a new or unseasoned tank, extra food can just end up rotting until the unseen dark hordes have developed. (One clue is to look for fish droppings on your substrate - when I first started my tank there were unsightly collection zones - now I never see any!) Take it slow at first.

It's also beneficial to stir up the sediment in a system like this occassionally to feed the LR and corals - it's remarkable how things look the day after.

I feed the equivalent of 4-5 frozen cubes of frozen homemade blended mixed fresh seafood every other day and spirulina flakes w/occasional frozen brine shrimp on the in-between days - that's for six fish, an anemone (which eats about 1/3 of that) and assorted corals in a 100G. Also occassional doses of cryopaste. I think this may not be considered heavy feeding by some others.

Tom

Wolverine
05/02/2000, 03:09 PM
anemone, I think you'll probably not start as much controversy as you were thinking. It seems that more and more people are going to the heavy feeding method. We've done it the whole time with our reef. I can't tell you exactly how much we feed, since I sort of just start dumping things in, and then stop when I feel like it. The fish get a lot, and then there's a lot that they don't get, so everything else does. We feed the reef and nano once a day. I've been feeding a bangaii fry in a 2.5g 3 times a day. And the FO gets fed three times a day. There's a good chance that the amount I feed is really not that heavy, but it's a lot heavier than I was told to feed when I first started in this hobby.

Dave

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ReefDad
05/02/2000, 03:16 PM
I remember when I started my tank and asked the LFS how much to feed, they told me that the fish could go for a week easy without food and not to feed them more than a small amount once every other day - "just makes them poop more" and causes excess detritus they said!

Frisco
05/02/2000, 03:33 PM
One of my tubastraea will easily take 5 cubes a day, one lobophyllia will take 3 cubes, and another lobo also easily eats 3. And that's not even the fish! I feed heavily a minimum of twice daily also; you guys aren't alone.

JSC
05/02/2000, 03:48 PM
I feed twice a day.

MiNdErAsR
05/02/2000, 03:55 PM
Once or twice a day here too.

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Vins Fins
05/02/2000, 05:21 PM
there are important factors that may cause problems with heavy feeding. You need a great
skimmer,a well estabalished sand bed and a sump or refugium filled with macro algae will help greatly. Also this is a potential problem, if you have intence lighting and you
feed heavily there could be future problems. the key is to watch the live rock, if you notice like a brownish patch just starting to grow on you're LR then thats when you cut back on the feeding and i also cut back a couple of hrs on the lighting. some times the algae is hard to notice, because it can grow uniformally on your're rock, it's not always one sore thumb sticking out.you gota nip it in @$$ before it starts stringing out. I know everone likes to feed heavily,its plain common sence and watching things closely will keep you out of trouble.
http://home.twcny.rr.com/vguarno/

Vinny

Larry M
05/02/2000, 05:31 PM
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Vins Fins:

there are important factors that may cause problems with heavy feeding. You need a great
skimmer,a well estabalished sand bed and a sump or refugium filled with macro algae will help greatly. Also this is a potential problem, if you have intence lighting and you
feed heavily there could be future problems. the key is to watch the live rock, if you notice like a brownish patch just starting to grow on you're LR then thats when you cut back on the feeding and i also cut back a couple of hrs on the lighting. some times the algae is hard to notice, because it can grow uniformally on your're rock, it's not always one sore thumb sticking out.you gota nip it in @$$ before it starts stringing out. I know everone likes to feed heavily,its plain common sence and watching things closely will keep you out of trouble.
http://home.twcny.rr.com/vguarno/

Vinny

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yeah, you can take that to the bank. I was one of those who didn't use common sense and assumed an 18 month old reef could handle heavy feedings without increasing gradually. Big mistake. I became the local problem algae and cyano man as a result.



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Larry M

See my tanks at Northern Reef (http://www.reefcentral.com/northernreef/index.htm)

Vins Fins
05/02/2000, 05:49 PM
Hi Larry,

before i came to these on line reef boards,
i always new what rules where when it came to feeding,but then i started reading about everyone feeding there corals and fish heavily, I said to my self if they can so can't I. well i found out the hard way and went back to my old habits, and ocasionaly feed extra. my corals and fish are just fine and growing at descent rate. the thing that worries me is seeing all these new posts about people feeding corals continuous all day. I gota say i'm not falling for that one again. I feal sorry for the new guy who gets to excited to quickly.

Vinny

Anemone of the State
05/02/2000, 06:03 PM
Can you elaborate more on what to watch out for?

Yam
05/02/2000, 06:29 PM
I feed heavily twice a day. Just make sure you have a healthy sandbed. Also, if you have a deep sand bed, it would be best to avoid stirring it up. In my opinion, a deep sand bed allowed to mature gradually can handle a huge amount of excess nutrients. Nassarius snails are great for eating all the extra food off the sand, keeping everything nice and clean. This is what works for me, but if you don't up your feedings, take it slow so your system can adjust.

Danny

Danny

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ReefDad
05/02/2000, 08:51 PM
About the sand bed stirring:

Yam has a point - note in my previous post I suggest occassionally stirring, but there are critters (and bacteria) that live at different depths in the sand and it's probably hard on them to completely alter their environment . I try to simulate a moderate storm without going too deep and generally only stir one section at a time (squirting a baster in works well).

The benefits of stirring to the other invertebrates is definitely worth it IMO. I usually use a baster to blow the LR at the same time.

Tom

Hiromi
05/02/2000, 09:18 PM
Thanks for the great respone..
seems like i will start adjusting my tank from the usual 1-2 times per week to 4-5 times maybe..

it's nice to see that the critter have things to eat..i like feeding my little brittle stars too!

Thanks!
Hiromi

Wolverine
05/02/2000, 10:12 PM
Vinny, I don't completely agree with you about all the requirements for heavy feeding. We have a Bakpak2, which is an OK skimmer (but certainly not great). We also don't have a sump. We do have an Aquaclear converted into a refugium, but that's only been up for a little over a month, so it hasn't been critical. We do have a good live sand bed, and I do think that's important. Actually, I think that's been the whole key to our success. I also think that feeding heavily has played a large role in the development of that life; it's sort of a positive feedback loop.

I certainly won't disagree with you about watching things carefully, since I think that needs to be done anywey (why else would we have the tanks?). I think the key to upping the amount you feed is to do it slowly. If you feed once or twice a week, and then immediately start doing twice a day, there will definitely be an adjustment period. With ours, we fed heavily from the beginning, so the adjustment went along with the normal cycling/adjustment. Our main nutrient export is the macroalgae. Fortunately (and I know some people are snickering at that choice of word), the xenia is starting to grow faster, and the macroalgae slower.

Hiromi, like said above, you should probably make the adjustment pretty slowly, so you don't run into the problems that Vinny and Larry had.

Dave

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Clyde
05/02/2000, 10:26 PM
I feed twice a day, a bit more than a 1/2 cube of pro-salts (i change daily green/red/orange etc etc)

5 fish in a 75

Yellow Tang
Kole Tang
Saddleback Clown
6 line Wrasse
and a
Flamehawk.


i feed till some food start falling to the sandbed, which is about 3/4 of a cube and let the hermits get em when I am at work, and then again when I return from work.

I also feed my corals DT nightly now 1 cup, as I've noticed my sun polyps has greatly i mean greatly improved since I've done this and my other corals. and a Cube of Brine shrimp every other night (I m starting on larger chunks starting tonight Krill) to the SUn polyps

a cube to a carpet anemone and 1/2 cube to a smaller carpet I have.

Since I've started doing DT's and direct feedings some of my corals, I've noticed my 'bug life' has increased twicefold or more.

flatworms (excellent for my wrasse)

Copepods all over the glass, coalaine booming (which I dose b-ionic nightly)

I'm happy with the tank, but I do notice ammonia levels do rise sometimes, and stick to regular water changes help. (prolly from the 1 full sheet of nori a day, my tangs eat)

clyde

[This message has been edited by Clyde (edited 05-02-2000).]

jimhobbs
05/03/2000, 02:23 AM
A lot of these feeding levels can be achieved if the feeding is ramped up to the higher levels...The tanks ecosystem needs time to develop and mature to deal with the increased bio-matter load being dumped into it...Natural reefs are constantly buzzing with food life; and, to duplicate this constant availability requires a mature system to handle it...

Personally, something consumable is dumped into my tank every 3-4 hours; but I didn't start that way...I gradually built up this system that is capable of handling
<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
<LI>phytoplankton two times a day
<LI>zooeplankton once a day
<LI>plankton gold flakes 4 times a day
<LI>mixed seafood cube once a day
</UL>

If you increase, do so slowly...Best regards...jim :)