Continuous "natural" feeding
 

I read an interesting article from a UK site that increased the feeding of their fish and corals significantly, as an experiment.

[url]http://www.acropora-house.co.uk/acatalog/Natural_Feeding.html[/url]

The way they approached it was to give small feeds, every 15 minutes, both night and day. They carefully assessed water parameters and coral health for signs of change.

Early results seemed very positive. The theory, as I read it is, the fish and invertebrates have time to digest/process the small feeds, therefore leaving less undigested food to go to waste.

Has anyone on RC tried this method? If so, what results?

There seems to be some who are fairly liberal with feeding, saying "starving corals are unhealthy corals". Others say "I don't feed much at all, just use good lighting and water motion. Better water quality that way".

Thoughts?

Def Interesting. Way to much time to feed the fish. id drop a hamburger in my tank if theyed eat it.

Hmm... very interesting.
If the food container, peristaltic pump et al. were inside one of those little "dorm" refrigerators, it would keep well enough to last several days at least. You could pump it out through a small hole in the fridge. The food in the tube outside the fridge wouldn't have time to spoil. It would go into the tank within and hour probably. I think you's want the output of the feeding tube down fairly low inside the tank to keep the food from going over the top and into the sump / fuge. I bet the fish would learn to camp out by it in short order!
Hmm...

man those would have to be tiny feedings.. and you would have to have no life... lol

I don't really think it is practicle to feed our tanks like they are fed in the wild. Shimek counted over a million pieces of food in a day over a three square foot area in the wild, I can't produce that.

I do run a refugium to try to add to the constant food supply.

Currently I feed 4x a day, all small feeding. My fish are doing great. I got used to the process when raising seahorse fry. Now for my reef I feed 4 cubes of different types of food as well as artic pods and phyto feast ( I prefer D.T's but it is hard to find and I'm done growing my own until I move out of the apartment. :) ) The corals also are doing quite well.

The refugium produces other food sources through out the day.

It is not really that hard. I feed some when I wake up. I feed a bit more before work. I feed some when I get home from work. I feed the rest when Leno starts his monologue.

I also turn the return pumps off for 30 minutes when I feed. It's on a timer so I just move it forward to the off position right before I feed, it goes back on 30 minutes later. Gives the refugium more time to process stuff I guess. I don't know seems to work for me.

I'm really obsessed with my fish so making them happy makes me happy. I actually dream about them. I think I need a support group. How could you not love this guy who is used to constant feeding in the wild.

[IMG]http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s306/pledosophy/pottersleaporadwrasse.jpg[/IMG]

We all love pics no? :)

I think its an interesting idea. I could analogize it to the growth surge I got when I went from dosing Alk/CA once a day to continously with a doser. Having the food avaialble when the coral "want" to feed, could have dramatic results.

Ron Shimek wrote an article a few years back pointing out that the way that people usually feed reef tanks (a few or less feedings per day of highly nutricious food) is literally backwards of the how reef organisms feed in nature. In nature food for most reef animals (save larger predators) comes in many, many tiny little pieces over the entire day (or night, as the case may be) and that the nutritional quality is relatively much lower. The animals digest the food better and produce less waste, though they get the same or better nutrition. Also, most reef animals just aren't very well designed to deal with larger, less frequent meals. Their digestive tracts are made for many small meals, not few big ones.

This is something that could/would make a huge difference in so many aspects of reef husbandry. Better fed fish are generally far less territorial. Better fed animals are generally much healthier and more productive (growth and reproduction). With smaller meals digestion is more thorough and excreted waste is reduced, reducing nutrient/algae problems.

There are a few pratical limitations to get this all to work exactly right, but think of how easy this could be if we did solve those few limitations. Most folks have their lights on timers. Why shouldn't we have automatic feeders too that provide good quality food at appropriately frequent intervals to give a least a closer approximation of what goes on in nature.

cj

I have been running 2 eheim feeders for a while now. They are set to feed 2 different types of pellets at 2 hour intervals. Therefore between the 2, a small feed is administered every hour while the lights are on. Keeps the fish constantly interested during the day, and well fed of course. Doesn't feed the corals directly however. I'm thinking hard about how I could do this as well.

Eureka!
 

This is one of those things that, when you see it/read it, you say, "Of course!" I can't help but think my own feeding habits of my reef tanks have in the past been on a schedule, a sort of holdover from my days of fresh water tank keeping, something ingrained in me by my parents and older brothers with phrases like, "did you feed the fish today?" back when I was 5.

Wondering how many of us were suprised to see the nitrates to go down during the period of observation with that "over feeding" in the methods section. I guess the nitrates are being assimilated into the worms, pods, and microfauna biomass. There must be a tipping point though, right? I mean, once the large closed sysstem maxes out it's ability to support any additional life, the balance will show a gradual return to nutrient excess, no? If not, then let's place bets on who will write the article on hair algae control by feeding more! :D

Technically, it is about as easy as a Kalk reactor, and with people spending money on Deltec skimmers and CO2 injection systems, this wouldn't be that much of an initial outlay...except that your previous budget of "two packs of Formula 2, two packs of nori from the asian grocer" will turn into big money within the first two hours of continuous feeding. Not to mention every 15 minutes for 5 seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days/year.

Mike

[QUOTE]If not, then let's place bets on who will write the article on hair algae control by feeding more![/QUOTE]

Ha! I already did. Back in a club newsletter eight years ago. It's happened to me several times over the years that during periods where I quit feeding with a shovel, like I usually do, I end up with dissolved nutrient spikes.

Trying to incorporate this into an article as we speak.

People, what a subject and a passion of mine (Taylor_Made is me)! So you take rotifers and other foods and the push them through a medical pump at let's say 10 ml per hour to start and then adjust (yes, that depends on the tank size and other factors). OK, I am going to use my system as an example, I have a basement sump with the display on the next level, I won't bore you with the details, but I do have a main return line and now lets say I tap that line and feed 10-50 ml per hour of zoo-plankton and maybe just a little phytoplankton and this is the weird part, I have two sumps, the second being gravity fed from the first and there I have sediment, because, well it settles, so now I add to my feeding mix small amounts of sediment and because the system already contains the sediment, I am not increasing the nutrients via this addition. The next step I believe is the most important, with my system(and many other people systems have this ability as well), I can do a water change very easy, so now after starting this nutrient push, I do a water change of let's say 10% every other day! Because my system is closed, I HAVE to export nutrients if I add them at a higher rate than my bio-filters and animals can remove, how best to accomplish this? Through water changes, ugh, drudgery right? Nope, open valve, close valve, turn on switch, turn off switch and viola, water change done! But I have an ulterior motivation, I would someday like to keep those beautiful eye candy's we call non-symbiotic corals, gorgonians and dendronephthya, but first baby steps. Right now I feed my fish 5-7 feedings a day of dried zoo-plankton and the fish are very active and healthy. This feeding 24/7 in measured amounts tailored to each system can work! Now, find holes in my theory's and let's move forward.

Dan

Dan, how have the health of your corals changed since starting this feeding schedule. Did you start doing such regular water changes because of elevated nutrients?

mxett, I have not yet implemented the feeding I described, I am hoping to get input on how others feel. The only thing I do now is feed my fish 5-7 times a day by hand. Currently I only change 10-15% weekly, my nitrates are < 1. But I do agree that a slow feed all day, would be very beneficial, people in this thread seem to have a handle on the needs of marine animals.

Dan

Do you really think that increasing the small feeds will require such regular water changes? If you do do it, start regular but with a small increase, then increase over time.

I am not sure if it would require any additional water changes and my system has twice the water volume than the display tank. But I do have the ability to do water changes if needed. In any closed system there comes a point were the addition of foods becomes more than the animals and bacteria can handle and when it reached that point, water changes will be required to offset the accumulating nutrients. What I do know is that so far know one has been able to keep thriving non-symbiotic corals alive. But the theory of small 24/7 feedings should benefit all corals and fish as well. Finding the proper food and total volume dispensed will be a lot of trail and error. Please though if anyone feels that there are big holes in this theory give us your thoughts. I do believe this is the next frontier in the world of reef tanks.

Dan

"But I do have the ability to do water changes"

I meant to say to do water changes in a very fast and easy to do method. We all have the ability to water changes!

Also my tank is a 90 gallon not the 30, I need to edit my profile.

hope I didn't kill the thread.

Psssch, whatever...thread killer :rolleyes:

Try this:)

[url]http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-07/nftt/index.php[/url]

Well if anything we've learned to feed more smaller meals instead of one big one. But that's what I've been doing anyway. Keeping it practical I feel 3-4 times a day, each meal a different food, and each one a small portion that the fish finish within 30 seconds.

I do agree with feeding several small meals a day. It just seems more natural, afterall. We humans eat a few times to several times a day. Why only feed your fish once?

Exactly, and our digestive systems are MUCH better equipped for infrequent larger meals than are most of our fish and other critters.

cj

So........come on you clever people. Who has some good solutions for constant small feeds, ideally utilising liquid feeding, so coral and fresh (defrosted frozen food) can be used???

peristaltic pumps running inside a small fridge CONSTANTLY pumping food into the system. I think if you run a LARGE fuge with LOTS of macro, and a well oversized skimmer, that you could get away with weekly or bi-weekly water changes...with a bug aneough fuge and enough macro (possibly multiple, seperately lit macro fuges) you might be able to do away with the skimmer, which will keep more of the small stuff that is desirable(?) in a non photo seup for dendro's and gorgonians.

I think there may be an alternate method, with live food. Granted, this is limited to what you can culture in mass quantities, but I have been thinking about this for a while, initially with thoughts of Mandarin feeding. I've attached a rough sketch of a multi-layered culturing system I thought up when I should have working ...

1) one or two holding tanks for new SW.

2) The new sw runs through a UV sterilizer (I tried to make this as contamination proof as possible, as I've heard more problems with this issue on live culturing than anything else) There are some obvious unresolved issues with this part of the set up as the UV sterilizer would need a minimum flow.

3) The air supply goes through an intake filterbox (Again, trying to keep as many contaminates out of this as possible) which services all of the air in the culturing stations.

4) After the UV, the new SW enters a manifold that is set to drip feed (adjusted with some quick-connect valves) into continuos culture tubes of several different cultures of phyto - Nannochloropsis, Tetraselmis, Isocrysis, or whatever... which has a surge feed to the lower chamber culturing vessels. The Phyto has some fluorescent lighting on a 16/8 shcedule

5) The lower culturing vessels contain rotifers, or whateve else you want. These, again, are surge fed .. initially I had designed this to feed in to the sump right at the return pump...

So this basicaly means the rate of "feeding" would be determined essentially by the drip rate into the Phyto vessels. (the levels set for the surges would be mitigating, but it would still ultimately be set by the intial drip rate) The lower culturing vessels could be set up for whatever type of zoo you think you could culture.

this would also lend itself to what Dan was saying about daily water changes... you would need to stay on top of Salinity, and overall water level in your system, but I don't think it would be that difficult to accomplish. Again, it's only limited by what could be cultured on a continuous basis...

aw crap - I need to figure out how to change my paint shop (I know, I know... but this was done on a work computer) image to one I can post...

Biffer,
Excellent! Plus this lends itself easily to using a "geosapper" type device.