der_wille_zur_macht
Team RC
Hello NPS forum,
While I don't currently have a dedicated NPS tank and I don't plan on having one in the near future, I'm trying to learn all I can about them because I appreciate the non-mainstream nature and the effort that's put into specific problems that probably could cross over to typical reef tanks with good success.
The main thing that seems to separate an NPS tank from a typical reef tank is the amount of food. I'm interested in learning more about the overall approaches people are using to feed their tanks and then export nutrients. Since I'm new to the NPS world I am sure this has all been debated at length so feel free to point me to old threads if that is the case.
It seems like there are basically two schools of thought. On the one hand, people are feeding extremely heavy amounts of prepared (dead) food. This creates a huge and instant nutrient load that seems to be typically handled by very powerful skimmers or other methods typical on a normal reef tank, just scaled up. Are there any NPS-specific approaches I am missing? I am surprised that methods like algae scrubbers are not more common, since they can target nutrients (which I would call "the real enemy") instead of directly removing the food items (as I suspect happens with skimmers or mechanical filtration, since it seems common to take these items offline during feedings).
The second school seems to be feeding live food, which doesn't seem to create the instant "hit" of nutrients that must be exported. I am surprised to see that this is not more common - most of the feeding threads on here seem to concentrate on things like dosers in minifridges, instead of, say, a plankton reactor to grow suitable live food. Is this because growing live food is just too difficult? Is the nutrient export load not really any different after all? Is there something else I'm missing?
Interested in hearing from anyone who has thoughts on these subjects.
While I don't currently have a dedicated NPS tank and I don't plan on having one in the near future, I'm trying to learn all I can about them because I appreciate the non-mainstream nature and the effort that's put into specific problems that probably could cross over to typical reef tanks with good success.
The main thing that seems to separate an NPS tank from a typical reef tank is the amount of food. I'm interested in learning more about the overall approaches people are using to feed their tanks and then export nutrients. Since I'm new to the NPS world I am sure this has all been debated at length so feel free to point me to old threads if that is the case.
It seems like there are basically two schools of thought. On the one hand, people are feeding extremely heavy amounts of prepared (dead) food. This creates a huge and instant nutrient load that seems to be typically handled by very powerful skimmers or other methods typical on a normal reef tank, just scaled up. Are there any NPS-specific approaches I am missing? I am surprised that methods like algae scrubbers are not more common, since they can target nutrients (which I would call "the real enemy") instead of directly removing the food items (as I suspect happens with skimmers or mechanical filtration, since it seems common to take these items offline during feedings).
The second school seems to be feeding live food, which doesn't seem to create the instant "hit" of nutrients that must be exported. I am surprised to see that this is not more common - most of the feeding threads on here seem to concentrate on things like dosers in minifridges, instead of, say, a plankton reactor to grow suitable live food. Is this because growing live food is just too difficult? Is the nutrient export load not really any different after all? Is there something else I'm missing?
Interested in hearing from anyone who has thoughts on these subjects.