Feeding

[DMBillies]

Everyone says to cut down on feeding if you have a phosphate problem (which it seems that mine are slowly creeping up and algae is following it). So, this is a totally newbie question, but I'm wondering what is considered "normal" feeding? I have a 60 gallon (w/ large CPR hang-on fuge and prizm skimmer) with 2 ocellaris clowns, a goldheaded sleeper goby, a pajama cardinal, a royal gramma, and a 6-line wrasse. For my clean up crew I have a smattering of hermits (adding up to probably 15-20 - blue leg, zebra, scarlet), 10-15 astrea snails, 5 nassarius snails, 2 Turbos, and 4 peppermint shrimp. I have in the neighborhood of 100 lbs. of live rock. Any suggestions? Having started with fresh I never had to worry about nitrates and phosphates (much) and probably learned to feed a little heavy because of that. I want my corals to do fine, but I don't want my fish to starve to death either. I'm planning on an upgrade of everything in the near future, but my solution for now (other than cutting back on feeding...which I'd like some input on) was to spend some time blowing out all of my rocks with a powerhead, run my crappy hang on filter for a while to catch as much stuff as possible, and do a larger than normal water change (about 20 gallons). I religiously do 10 gallon changes every week to make up for my low-budget set-up.

Just for reference, my source water tests out 0 for phosphates and nitrates, so it isn't that.

Sorry for the book and TIA for any input.

 

[Pickupman66]

DM, I am prolly the laziest of all here when it comes to feedings. I feed my fish once daily (occasionaly miss) and I feed the formula 2 flake. Good stuff. every few days I feed a frozen cube (cannot remember name but it has several meaty foods and some spriuline in it) and some cyclopeze. fish look good and fat expecially the angel fish, and so far so good. for fish I have 2 bar gobies, 1 fire fish, 1 percula, 1 purple tang, 1 watanebei angel, and a bicolor blenny. throw in a couple hundred snails and a reef lobster and that is what I got. I plan on adding a kole tang tomorrow, and I may just give a bigger pinch and then start supplementing with the nori sheet from AC.

 

[Mikeyjer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7307492#post7307492 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Pickupman66
DM, I am prolly the laziest of all here when it comes to feedings. I feed my fish once daily (occasionaly miss) and I feed the formula 2 flake. Good stuff. every few days I feed a frozen cube (cannot remember name but it has several meaty foods and some spriuline in it) and some cyclopeze. fish look good and fat expecially the angel fish, and so far so good. for fish I have 2 bar gobies, 1 fire fish, 1 percula, 1 purple tang, 1 watanebei angel, and a bicolor blenny. throw in a couple hundred snails and a reef lobster and that is what I got. I plan on adding a kole tang tomorrow, and I may just give a bigger pinch and then start supplementing with the nori sheet from AC.

You can buy nori from asian markets much cheaper then AC! That's what I've been using to feed my tangs for almost a year. It's the samething, my tangs are fat and happy!

 

[fishdoc11]

What is your P reading with what kit?

If your P is creeping up you likely have detrituis building up somewhere in your tank that isn't being processed.

FWIW I feed my large tangs a bunch(nori usually once a day which is HIGH in P plus frozen at night) and have zero P, I do have big skimmer though which IMO is the best way to get P out.

Chris

 

[DMBillies]

It's a Red Sea test kit and I think it was reading out just below .2 ppm (the test kit and my test records are at home and I can't remember the scale for the test). At any rate, it was right about on the second color bar whatever that number is. I know on the low end of a lot of these test kits they won't read very accurately and so I'm assuming that P has just been building up (as Chris suggests) and that it has only recently built up enough to become readable and high enough to start an algae bloom. It's not in plague proportions yet, but I want to get it straightened out before and I was worried that I might be way over-feeding.

I haven't re-tested since my big water change, but everything in the tank looks happier and I'm not getting algae on the glass as fast as I had been. The tank got a film on top the day after blowing everything out and the skimmer quickly took care of it. So, I'll just cut back on feeding and make sure, in addition to my water changes, that I really get my live rock blown off every time. My tank has pretty good flow, but the way the rocks are stacked (stupid foot wide tank doesn't leave me many aquascaping choices) I probably have some dead spots.