enough food?

[brandon0350]

i have had my tank setup for about 2 weeks. it a bb cube. asm g2 skimmer 2 seio 1500s mag 12 return on a om supersquirt dual chamber calcium reactor 1/10th hp chiller, 250 hqi w/ pheonix. all perameters are stable. i just added a few frags yesterday and im not getting very good PE since its a low nutrient environment w/ no fish should i feed the sps? what should i feed them?

 

[toothman]

Wow!! talk about instant gratification. I would be happy if my sps looked healthy in a 2 week old tank. Good luck, I think it is reasonable to expect some staghorn, monti's to grow about 1/2 " a month in a established tank. Wish you well.

 

[Serioussnaps]

Do you have a refugium. If not, get thee a refugium now, with these you will have natural food and will help keep a clean, more stable environment. In the fuge do a 4-5 inch DSB with chaeto and some PC lighting. I wouldnt have any reef tank without a refugium.

---Also, feeding wise, if you have clams then you may want to target feed some DT's phytoplankton, but if you dont have clams then you can skip the phyto.
----I like having some nutrients in an SPS tank. Some like it to be 0 ppm of Nitrates and 0 phosphates. I like 0 phosphates and about 5 ppm 's of nitrate.
------Feed your coral a homemade mush of some sort. Or, just get some FROZEN CYCLOPEEZE.
----Enrich it with some zoe or selcon or both. An feed to tank every couple of days. But dont go overboard, just slowly experiment over time and see how the corals react.

 

[MiddletonMark]

If running a BB tank, I would skip a refugium.

IMO, it goes against the BB method to have an external sandbed where detritus is sunk.

I would consider feeding. Some smaller food [cyclop-eeze, oyster eggs, small-chopped `mush'] would probably be useful to add. You'll have to figure out how much your tank can handle, but I'd do a slow increase and see where nutrients/algae/glass-cleaning tell you to go.