I must be stupid what is reefstew?

[Ron1955]

Ok for st louis now folks I have to play stupid reading all the post
and people selling bags etc of it I now cant stand it anylonger not knowing, what is REEFSTEW? If you can sort of tell me I would love to know.
thanks

[GustavoAZ]

I wondered the same thing, from my understanding it's a live culture of plankton and various other cirtters corals like to eat.

[hermanx7]

Reefstew is a combination of great things for your reef tank. Different types of planktons, pods and baby brime shrimp. A great treat for your fish and corals. Also with the pods and whatnot it helps a new tank get cycled quicker. Bajabum has a good recipe.

[elzool]

Originally posted by grenaria
The stew consists mostly of live phytoplankton, rotifers, copepods and artemia (naupalii and adult). There are some other larvae that I have seen at times, peppermint shrimp and clownfish at least. The rotifers and artemia will not be able to establish a population in our tanks, which are really nowhere near ideal conditions for these animals, but they will be available as live food and then as freshly dead food for the entire food web of your aquarium.

Any copepods that do not get consumed have a good chance of getting established, but you need populations probably in the thousands before you will notice them on the glass. This generally takes months unless the initial culture is large of course. Copepod populations can be established with the use of live rock also, this takes a long time with freshly cured live rock, although rock can be moved from established aquariums to greatly speed this process.

Nothing in the reef stew, and very little that comes from live rock can be concidered sand dwelling organisms that you need to seed a sand bed for proper DSB construction. In fact, there are very few places to purchase the proper diversity needed to construct a DSB, and doing it any other way can be very detrimental to an aquarium. A great deal of the animals that are needed cannot reproduce in captivity. It must come directly from "muddy" areas of the tropics. I don't know of anywhere locally that this is available for sale, and I only know 3 online vendors.

The refugium is another story entirely, there are many "pods" that will breed prolifically in the proper conditions. Most of these can be seeded from live rock, or from rock and sand of other reefers. All of these make excellent fish food, just ask my wrasse!

That post seems to have a solid ingredient list.

[bajabum]

My Reef Stew is an long term algae/zooplankton culture I use to raise saltwater fish fry. The original culture was started from ocean plankton, not a lab monoculture. I reseed it several times each winter to maintain biodiversity. I also use it in my coral systems to maintain a high diversity of zooplankton. I raise fish and other creatures that only eat live plankton. I am currently maitaining 200 gallons in cultures. The zooplankton that resides in it primarily eat algae. The green in the water is algae, the most nutritious food source available.
I hatch my clownfish in it, wait 4 days and add baby brineshrimp. The culture is capable of growing the fry without adding additional food. I currently have 5 baby seahorses, 2 bangahi cardinals and 20 baby clowns in a 10 gallon tank. All I do everyday is add some more baby brineshrimp to replace the big stuff being eaten. Some times I have to remove some of the big stuff that has grown to much.
I have a write up here under reef stew.