Feeding Young Clowns/Damaging Equipment

[mattyg18]

Hello All - I've got a pair of Black Ice Snowflakes that are about 3 months old. I've had them for about a month now. They tend to stay in the far-left-back-top part of my 60 gal cube most of the time. They will occasionally venture to the bottom but only in that are. There are no other fish in the tank; just corals and a bunch of snails. When feeding them I need to turn off my pump/overflow and powerhead otherwise the pellet food gets sucked into the overflow and they don't have a chance to eat. I'm feeding them at least twice a day. Although they don't eat much they are eating. I've also tried the mice shrimp with success in the medicine dropper.

My question is that since i'm shutting down the pump and powerhead every day 2-3 times a day for about 2-3 minutes is that doing any damage to this equipment?

If anyone has any thoughts i'd greatly appreciate it. Or if you think this should be posted in the "New to the hobby" section please let me know. I am fairly new at this although figured it would be appropriate posting here.

Thanks in advance.

 

[rt67ghy]

There's no harm done to the pump, etc. I always shut off my pump and wave maker when I feed my fish and corals every day. I target feed and almost all the food gets eaten before falling to the bottom. If you feed the fish till they are full, feeding once a day is enough. I keep my pump off for about 2 hours during feeding and wave maker off for about an hour.

 

[ThRoewer]

Some pumps may get damaged over time if stopped and started frequently. It's usually the cheaper AC pumps with the slightly loose propellers. Those propellers may break from frequent starts.
DC pumps or AC pumps with defined rotation direction should not be affected.

 

[mattyg18]

I've got an Eheim Pump which I think is pretty good. The powerhead isn't anything fancy. Think it was only around $15-20 so i'm not too concerned about it. The pump was about $200, maybe more. Hopefully its good enough to hold up to all of the starts/stops.

Thanks again!

 

[Sugar_tan32]

I kinda have this problem with feeding my clowns...so would my hydor koralia nano 240 be affected when switching it on and off for feedings??