Feeding dry foods exclusively?

[jadette]

There are so many wonderful threads here on feeding azoos and I've researched so many different feeding regimens. I haven't come across any setups that are based solely on feeding their NPS systems with dry foods only. Is there a reason for this?

If an auto feeder was set to feed the tank... say 8 times a day... With a very diverse combination of dry foods, will that suffice?

Also, I'm seeing so many set-ups that require refrigeration. What about the liquid foods that do not require refridgeration? Like Brightwell Aquatics Reef Snow? If I used an autodoser to feed Reef Snow and other liquid foods that do not require refrigeration in addition to the dry mix food on the auto feeder, am I setting myself up for disaster?

This feeding regimen of course will assume that I will be manually feeding my sun corals mysis once a day.

I'd appreciate any info I can get!

 

[King_Richard]

I'm curious to this as well. Not the dry foods aspect of it, but the liquid non-refrigirated foods is what I'm considering. I also picked up some of the Brightwell Snow and I'm considering running an IV drip.

The idea I was thinking of, dilluting the snow in some ro/di water, then using that dilluted mix to drip into the sump near the pump.

I loose about a gallon a day in evaporation, so I could come up with a 3 gallon container to set this up on and hopefully get a slow enough drip to last a couple days. We're considering getting a carnation so this could be extremely usefull if I choose to setup the IV food drip. I like the mini fridge idea, but, I live in an apartment, and I'm not about to put a mini fridge next to the tank, that's tacky looking in my opinion. Let me know what you think about the IV drip.

 

[slapshot]

There are so many wonderful threads here on feeding azoos and I've researched so many different feeding regimens. I haven't come across any setups that are based solely on feeding their NPS systems with dry foods only. Is there a reason for this?

If an auto feeder was set to feed the tank... say 8 times a day... With a very diverse combination of dry foods, will that suffice?

Also, I'm seeing so many set-ups that require refrigeration. What about the liquid foods that do not require refridgeration? Like Brightwell Aquatics Reef Snow? If I used an autodoser to feed Reef Snow and other liquid foods that do not require refrigeration in addition to the dry mix food on the auto feeder, am I setting myself up for disaster?

This feeding regimen of course will assume that I will be manually feeding my sun corals mysis once a day.

I'd appreciate any info I can get!

A lot of the guys use dry in a dry feeder in addition to wet. The main reason is most of us don't know what they eat so we are in the mode of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them in hopes something will hit the target.

I'm curious to this as well. Not the dry foods aspect of it, but the liquid non-refrigirated foods is what I'm considering. I also picked up some of the Brightwell Snow and I'm considering running an IV drip.

The idea I was thinking of, dilluting the snow in some ro/di water, then using that dilluted mix to drip into the sump near the pump.

I loose about a gallon a day in evaporation, so I could come up with a 3 gallon container to set this up on and hopefully get a slow enough drip to last a couple days. We're considering getting a carnation so this could be extremely usefull if I choose to setup the IV food drip. I like the mini fridge idea, but, I live in an apartment, and I'm not about to put a mini fridge next to the tank, that's tacky looking in my opinion. Let me know what you think about the IV drip.

The issue is keeping it cold so the food does not spoil. You can get those small car travel refrigerators. (12" high by 8" wide)They don't take up any room. I used one for months. It worked great.

 

[jadette]

A lot of the guys use dry in a dry feeder in addition to wet. The main reason is most of us don't know what they eat so we are in the mode of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them in hopes something will hit the target.

I know what you mean. I'm just throwing everything at them and trying to gauge what they like best.

I mix three different kinds of dry food (cyclop-eeze, coral frenzy, and ESV phyto) and manually feed RN Oyster Feast and Roti-feast every day. I also harvest baby brine shrimp every day for them. I'm not really seeing much of a feeding response with the dried food, an okay response with e reef nutrition stuff, but when I throw down the live baby brine, the whole tank just perks up with polyps nice and happy!

I think I'm going to stop using the dried stuff and try the non-refrigerated bottles for awhile. If that works, I'll set up an automated feeder w/o refrigeration and see how that goes.

Some pics of my gorgonian and chili after putting BBS in my tank:

 

[jadette]

A lot of the guys use dry in a dry feeder in addition to wet. The main reason is most of us don't know what they eat so we are in the mode of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them in hopes something will hit the target.



The issue is keeping it cold so the food does not spoil. You can get those small car travel refrigerators. (12" high by 8" wide)They don't take up any room. I used one for months. It worked great.

I'm curious to this as well. Not the dry foods aspect of it, but the liquid non-refrigirated foods is what I'm considering. I also picked up some of the Brightwell Snow and I'm considering running an IV drip.

The idea I was thinking of, dilluting the snow in some ro/di water, then using that dilluted mix to drip into the sump near the pump.

I loose about a gallon a day in evaporation, so I could come up with a 3 gallon container to set this up on and hopefully get a slow enough drip to last a couple days. We're considering getting a carnation so this could be extremely usefull if I choose to setup the IV food drip. I like the mini fridge idea, but, I live in an apartment, and I'm not about to put a mini fridge next to the tank, that's tacky looking in my opinion. Let me know what you think about the IV drip.

I would like to try the IV drip method too. What I would be concerned with is keeping the food in suspension. Reef snow and the like requires a good bottle shake before feeding. I guess if your top-off water with the reef snow had some sort of pump to keep it in constant circulation, i don't see why it wouldn't work.

 

[King_Richard]

Whichever contraption I come up with for holding the top-off water (space is an issue) I plan on running an airpump on it to hopefully keep everything suspend. I also picked up some of the phyto chrom to put in there which also isn't necessary to refrigerate. I will keep the bottles refrigerated and hopefully a 3 day mix won't spoil in the top-off water.

jadette,
Those are some nice pics and healthy looking corals there. I've always wanted a gorgonian but haven't taken the plunge yet. The carnation we picked up is more then likely a chili but I haven't seen it's polyp's yet so not positve, it was in a tank with no labels, just cheap prices on all of their corals since they were dying off in that tank so I figured I'd try to turn em around, rather then let them die there at the store. I'm a sucker for suffering fish and corals and most of the time I'm able to bring them back if I've got the room for them. I really wanted to grab a favia out of there but my dremel broke so I wouldn't be able to cut off the infected areas, shame too, it was a good size piece for 20$ that just needed an operation.

slapshot,
The dimensions for the car fridge might work, I'll have to check into it. I noticed your in Farmington Hills also, my aunt used to live there and I've spent some summers there as a kid, nice area on the outskirts of Detroit from what I remember and I always had fun there. Haven't been there since the late 90's though. Except for a quick drive around the area down telegraph and then another down 8 mile so my girlfriend could say she's been on 8 mile, lol.