How often do you feed your fish?

[jkhudson]

I have a 75 gal. reef tank with a flame angel, a scooter blenny, a lawnmower blenny, an 2 damsels. I feed them a frozen cube(thawed) of brine or mysis shrip every other day. I also have a large "patch" of macroalgae and caulerpa growing. Is this enough?

[bertoni]

That might be plenty of food, depending on the size of the cube. I'd rotate a more varied frozen fish food, like Formula 1 or Formula 2, into the diet as well. I'd also feed every day, but half the amount.

[Dubbin1]

3 small cubes every other day. This includes both tanks and corals. 2 GSM clowns, false perc, naso tang, scooter blenny, scopas tang, chromis,
scissortail dartfish and a coral beauty.

[blackcows]

I probably feed a lot more than most but I work at home so I usually feed 2 to 4 times a day. When I first got my tank the fish would hide when someone would come to the tank now that I feed several times a day they come out when someone comes to the tank.

Mike

[lossman]

Not to hijack the thread but.......whoa!! We feed way less than that and everyone keeps saying that our algae problems are due to overfeeding!! We have 4 fish in our 150g - a harlequin basslet, a royal gramma, an indigo hamlet and a yellowhead wrasse. We also have a ton of bivalves, hermits, snails etc. We feed the equivilant of 1/4 cube food (I made my own fish food) every day. I feed Reef Chili for the corals and other filter feeders once every week or two weeks. I am assuming that the algae outbreaks are a normal part of the first year cycle and not due to overfeeding. :)

[Saltywater]

I feed twice a day. This includes 2 true perc, 3 bar gobies, 1 salfin tang, 1 mimic tang, 1 marine beta, 3 blue eyed cardinals, 1 pajama cardinal, 1 foxface rabbitfish, 1 majestic rabbitfish, 1 opossum wrasse, 1 mandarin, 1 orchid dottyback, 1 labuti wrasse, 7 fire shrimp, 3 cleaner shrimp, 2 sand sifting stars, many hermits and snails. In the morning they get a cube of Mysis shrimp and flake food. Then at night they get 2 cubes of squid or angel food or kreal or formula (something) and cyclopeez. I try to mix the food up at night. The coral is feed dts or coral food every other day.

[lossman]

Saltywater, how long has your tank been set up?

[Saltywater]

lossman,

My tank has been up for 1+ years. Getting ready to upgrade to a 400gal system in the nexted month or so.

[lossman]

And have you always fed so heavily? Did you run the gamut of algae blooms for the first year?

Sally

[Saltywater]

I have always feed the same schedule since the tank was up and stocked. I had some algee blooms but I did not see algee like some people talk about on RC. I just added more turbo snails and they pretty much took care of it.

I think I was lucky with this tank. I started the tank out with about 180 lbs of Bioactive Live Aragonite Reef Sand and close to 300lbs of cured Live Rock. I never had a cycle in the tank. I left the tank run about a week with just the sand and rock and then started adding the inverts and fish. The tank has been pretty much stable since day one.

[TekCat]

in my 55AGA with only 2 clowns I split mysis shrimp cube in half. One one half in the morning and other half in the evening. Sometimes I substitute evening feed with Formula 2 flakes.

[bureau13]

I probably overfeed, but I'm not sure how else to feed a variety of temperaments, and still make sure everybody eats. I have a Majestic Angel and a dwarf Golden Angel, both of which are very shy when I approach the tank, so they run and hide. However I have some other fish which have such problem, and they eat everything they can grab before the other fish come back out to see if there is anything left. So, I basically have to feed enough so they get some too.

jds

[lossman]

Arrrggg!!! I feel so frustrated!! I hate these constant algae blooms and I sure would like to see this hair algae not spread any further, but according to the "experts" it's due to excess nutrients. According to what everyone else is saying here, we probably underfeed as the small amount of food we put in the tank in the evening is gone in less than a minute. The times I attempt to give the condy and the stars some meat, the fish grab it before I can get it to the ones it belongs to. It's so hard to judge how much is too much!

[ChrisBuono]

Lossman,

I may not be telling you anything you don't already know, but I too struggled with some hair algae and a lot of cyano. I too was frustrated. (This is starting to sound like an infomercial.)

All about the same time I added a phosphate sponge to my sump for a couple of days in a row, added chaeto to my refugium (it's still there), and vacuumed and plucked as much of the algae and cyano as I could. I also changed about 10% water three times in two weeks.

About two weeks later my cyano was all but gone and my hair algae only grows very slowly in a few select spots.

I hope this helps.

Chris

[drmnbass]

Lossman,
what is chaeto?
mac

[xtrstangx]

I feed daily. My food is a mixture of:
Formula 1 Frozen
Formula 2 Frozen
Formula 1 Pellets
Formula 2 Pellets
Frozen mysis
Frozen carnivore mixture (made by some company.. it has a nice variety)
Garlic
Selcon

[lossman]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6380459#post6380459 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by drmnbass
Lossman,
what is chaeto?
mac

Chaeto is a macro algae that many reefers use in their refugium. It looks like this picture from crypto's photo gallery:

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/561/10661chaeto.jpg

[lossman]

Chris, you did kind of sound like an infomercial for a bit there!! :lol:

We already have three types of macro in the refugium and will be adding chaeto in about a week when it arrives. We also have three kinds of macro in the main tank. We went through two cycles of the red slime and have overcome that. I blow off the rocks every couple of days with a maxijet and allow the overflows to take the dirty water down into the sump into the filter sox. Once the water clears, I change the sox. We don't get much detritous down in the sump due to the sox but I vaccumn that out every water change, which is every other week.

I'm not panicking over the hair algae at this point, I just want to make sure it does not get worse. At the same time, I want to make sure my good macros thrive in the tank as we like the look of a planted tank. And I also want to make sure all my filter feeders as well as the fish and other inverts thrive and that we don't starve them in our attempt to get rid of the ha.

I'm glad everyone has been telling me how much more than us they feed. Makes me feel we are on the right track and definitely are not overfeeding!! :)

[Cutiewitbooty]

when i had my 46 gal set up i would feed twice a day the formula 2 or 1 in the morning and mysis and brine in the evening. From what i remember I had a lemon peel angel, maroon clown, firefish, a mandrin (it ate mysis) and i think thats it...............hmmm I never had any algae problems.

[lossman]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6380730#post6380730 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Cutiewitbooty
hmmm I never had any algae problems.

Oh....rub it in, why don't you!!???!!! :mixed:

[Cutiewitbooty]

thats why i loved my ecosystem filter :D

[hondadude2k5]

I feed my 26 gallon once a day a mixture that I made of brine shrimp, pellets, and flakes. I feed my 10gal nano twice a day of small part brine shrimp and small part cyclopeze pellets. I have had no algea problems to mention. Hi cutie.lol

[grimmjohn]

My clowns get about 20 pellets of Formula 1 a day each