24 hr natural feeding method

[achillesheel]

im considering using this method on my tank. it seems logical to give fish and corals food throughout the day and night like in nature. any thoughts, experiences, or links to other threads discussing this?

http://acropora-house.co.uk/acatalog/Natural_Feeding.html

thank you
shad

 

[gandhii]

That does sound like a cool idea. I wonder if a peristaltic pump coming off of a brine shrimp incubator tank (with babies and adults) filled with a phytoplankton colony would do the trick for small fish and corals et al. I just read another site about a guy messing with phytoplankton. Here http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/myinverts.html
Scroll to the bottom.

Then you could just leave the thing alone and not worry about reloading it everyday with frozen food that will thaw and go bad. Seems to me the trick would be to find a way to deliver live food to the tank in small increments without killing/damaging the food.

I'm a freshwater plant guy.. just now starting to experiment with a small macroalgae tank. But I might have to give that a try in a few months after I get everything else figured out. I'm afraid I can't help you. But thanks for passing on the great idea.

 

[silverwolf72]

good read, really gets you thinking

 

[achillesheel]

has anybody ever tried anything like this?

 

[LNell]

I've thought that this idea was pretty cool. It's not constant, but you could get it to feed very often if you wanted.
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-07/nftt/index.php

 

[Whalehead9]

For Non Photosynthetic coral tanks, people are using syringe pumps and prepared rotifers and phyto suspension(Both made by Reeds). The Syringe pump needs to be refilled every twelve hours. The syringe pump can be found at syringepump.com.

 

[zdawgnight]

This seems to make sence but I have a hard time seeing how the average reefer could handle such an expense. I personally am just a poor college student with a nano tank. It makes me feel bad that I am subjecting my inhabitants to what they make sound like torture. Also interesting question to bring up arent there various fish that gorge themselves on food and then hangout and hide? I wonder what effects this would have on a tank with a rhinopias or fish like that? Having a fish like that may call for different inhabitants but still would be interesting to see if system would do.

 

[JHemdal]

FWIW: I worked with a simple overflow feeder for plankton feeders; Anthias and Genicanthus angels. Here are some issues that need to be dealt with:

1) The overall nutrient input into the system needs to be controlled, it is easy to over-feed with these continous systems.

2) As mentioned, the dwell time must be limited. Non-living food items will begin to decompose in a matter of hours. The container must be kept completely clean and sterile or heterotrophic bacteria will coat the surfaces, waiting for the food items to move through.

3) With living food items (brine, rots and phyto) everyone realizes that the culture water used to raise them must be kept out of the main tank, but sometimes people lose sight of the fact that isolating the living plankton from the culture water, even for a short time, can reduce the nutritional value of the food (except phyto of course).

4) As always, beware of over-extrapolation. Food is NOT available to reef animals 100% of the time. Storms, mass spawning events, tidal changes all can affect the amount on plankton in the water column. Also, predatory animals do not have access to food 24/7, so don't carry this idea over to them.


JHemdal