Continuous "natural" feeding - Page 3

reptoreef · #51 10/16/2007, 08:48 AM

"Umm, fish?",

I suppose with your design, along with the uv sterilizer, adding the use of an ozone reactor would almost definitely insure that contamination would be impossible.

"Umm, fish?" · #52 10/16/2007, 10:48 AM

Oh, I'm sorry, it's not my design. I was posting Biffer's design so everyone could see it, as I couldn't get his Word document to work on my Mac. I should have made that more clear. But, yeah, I'm just hosting the JPEGs for him.

His design makes sense to me, though, as long as the water flow through the ozone is slow enough to kill _everything_ that might contaminate the phyto. I would also put a carbon chamber after the ozone, but that's just me. The big thing is to make sure that you can control any contamination after the ozone chamber.

timrandlerv10 · #53 10/19/2007, 12:12 AM

why are we using frozen food?

what about live pods, live bbs, live rots?

i think there are two camps: those who would defrost, clean and stock frozens every other/day, and those who would use live.

why arent the dry food people speaking up? :P

i cant let the phyto culture drop

--cause thats how you can maintain your salinity--that water is coming it at 1.018-1.021, so enough phyto dosing makes up for your topoff water.

add 2 gallons of new phyto-sourced water, drain off .5 gallons of dirty water, lose 1.5 to evaporation...

dendro982 · #54 10/19/2007, 09:06 AM

OK, I'm one of dry food people. Who wants to live on a dry food, if there is other choice? May be you can help:

Recently started the frozen food - cyclops and rotifers: cheaper, then dry and no need for mail order - available in LFS (although not always).

The required food range is ~50-600 micron zooplankton, so the choice is (Canada) rotifers and baby brine.

1. Keeping rotifer culture requires feeding by frozen algae paste (not available in LFS, mail order of frozen food costs a lot), or maintaining phytoplankton culture.

1.1. Keeping phytoplankton culture requires additional time, space (away from the living zone, even Rena and Tetra air pumps are not a welcome additions to the everyday life), light and fertilizer.

1.1.1. Fertilizer: what else kinds of Miracle Gro can be used? And how to wash out the fertilizer from culture before adding to the tank? Very reluctant to add fertilized water.

Tried, the phyto culture crashed. BTW, every trial costs a month of dry food feeding

2. Baby brine:
Problem with decapsulation (or removing shells) before adding hatched brine to the tank - fish was irritated, when added as is.

3. Refugium, where the microfood will grow by itself (or reproductive material of the stomatellas and other macro-inhabitants), using the tank water.

I had less problems with difficult to keep species, finesse of refugiums is beyond my understanding: I tried 4 times refugiums, at least half of year each, all become the source of pollution for the main tank and were disconnected. Red slime, acoel worms, in some cases - dinoflagellates. Still have two, free standing, may be I can revive them with your help.

This is OOT for this thread, may be some of you will be willing to make the thread "Make it your own: Troubleshooting for refugiums and live food cultures" for help the refugium and LF challenged, like me.

Thanks.

P.S. I did my search and research

jnarowe · #55 10/19/2007, 10:17 AM

dendro982: It's much easier and cheaper to make your own food and freeze it. That's what I do. I go to the local asian market and pick up mixed seafood (I remove the clam), shredded nori, get fresh seafood from the grocery store, add vitamins, garlic guard, mysid & brine, and whatever else I can get my hands on. I basically "kitchen sink" it and try to switch up from batch to batch. I usually add spirulina, frozen Formula One or Two, etc.

Then I blend it in a food processor, partially fill gallon ziplocks, and roll out flat. Then into the freezer they go. When it's time to feed, I break off a piece and soak it in tank water with more vitamins and shredded nori. When it's thawed, I strain it and feed it to the tank slowly.

This is essentially the Melev method as described in one of his podcast videos.

I rarely feed dry food, and that is only as a small snack at random times, and only with Spectrum pellets or spirulina pellets. I also leave my pumps on, contrary to conventional wisdom, and allow the food to disperse in the water column at a fairly high rate. This is more a function of system size tgough, and I don't recommend that for the average size tank.

dendro982 · #56 10/20/2007, 07:23 AM

Thanks, very kind of you!

I already tried both - the Melev's and Blundell's recipes, the problem is, that I have no customers to eat the main mass of the mix - above 700 micron, but below 1.5mm (1/32"), that is suitable for a fish. Too much water pollution (my filtration and skimming is far from perfect, although equipment is fairly good).

What I'm doing now - set a separate tank for a non-photosynthetic corals, and feed them the food of the known range: approximately 600 micron for large-polyped gorgonians, 200-500 for smaller-polyped ones and chilis, 50-100 for a small blue ones. This way I can add consumable amount of the food. Less pollution.

Not that all is used, of course - the next problem is to keep it afloat for a long time

jnarowe · #57 10/20/2007, 08:27 AM

I would love to see pictures of your system. I know the Vortech pumps I have keep food in suspension for a very long time.

dendro982 · #58 10/20/2007, 07:40 PM

Mine? They are miserable high maintenance nano - because of multiple hand feeding and leftovers settle on the bottom, and have to be removed by hand - but they work.

If you still wish to see the photos, I'll post them tomorrow.

Aren't Vortech pumps high gph and very expensive? Somehow I got that impression, reading forums.

jnarowe · #59 10/21/2007, 12:21 AM

yes and yes. a good Maxi-Jet mod will do about the same in terms of keeping the food in suspension long enough for it to be consumed.

I am always up for pics!!

dendro982 · #60 10/21/2007, 09:43 AM

Done. Too many photos - had to place in a separate thread , sorry.

Unfortunately, Maxi-Jet, especially modded, will require much bigger tanks, or corals will not open for a feeding - the flow should be aside of polyps/worms' crowns, not bend them.

jnarowe · #61 10/21/2007, 12:24 PM

very interesting setups. a lot of experimentation I will follow.

Serioussnaps · #62 10/21/2007, 04:42 PM

I see three issues with the method and one in the claims the article makes:

1)their nutrient levels actually dropped....right here I became extremely skeptical

2)if you used a peristalic pump and put the food in the bucket you would have to have something stir it..kind of like a kalk reactor or it would all settle to the bottom of the container

3)food spoiling

Just my thoughts...it makes great points however I saw alot of ridiculous claims in the writeup. IE...fish aggression differing in a closed system from nature is not due to feeding but due to size constraints and the whole less nutrients BS.

Also, if you look closely at alot of the corals you notice many are unhealthy despite the claims they make in the paper. Look at the tri color in the last picture of the article...half of its dead.