Feeding

[cuddle fish]

I have a goby, a maroon clown, 2 chromis and two bubble tip anenomes. Every aquarium store I go to tells me to feed with something else. So I now have frozen prawn, cyclops, brine shrimp and liquid zooplankton. Obviously I have been overfeeding because my nitrate is up and all of my crabs and snails died. Doinga BIG water change tomorrow! But to avoid overfeeding again, could someone please tell me how much and how often I should feed them? Thanks!!

 

[seapug]

feed once/day only what the fish will eat in a couple minutes, or better yet, feed nothing for a couple days and test your water. Anything that's not already on the verge of starvation will be fine for a couple days of forced fasting. How old is your tank?

 

[cuddle fish]

Thanks Seapug. My tank is about 3 months old. Everything was going great until I started trying to feed the anenomes the prawn. I didn't know how to do it and the prawn kept floating away, contaminating my tank, I'm sure. I've since gotten a feeding stick for the anenomes so it's much better. Also, the clown feeds one of the anenomes.
But I'm having trouble knowing how much to feed with the frozen food because it goes flying everywhere. I'm used to flakes which just float at the top.

 

[kevin2000]

Forget the sales pitch from the LFS.

Anemones do great with simple direct feeding ... helps keep the tank clean and you know exactly how much they are eating. Just put something substantial (brine shrimp, mysis, piece of shrimp etc) onto their tentacles once a week or less ... anemone will do fine.

Fish will eat just about anything so long as they can see it. Frozen brine shrimp is fine .. but remember that all the frozen water is loaded with nutrients that will give you algae from hell. Always thaw and rinse the frozen brine shrimp before using. I think frozen mysis is cleaner than brine shrimp and you might consider a switch when you run out of brine.

Toss/sell the zooplankton .. but don't put it into your tank.

Hope this helps

 

[onecrzyboi4u]

heres my feeding routine.. i feed the tank everyday.. i pop a frozen cube in. (love to see all the creatures get their food) then mondays i feed DTS then wed, and friday. then usually i'll pick a day where i'll feed the fish in the evenings.. i alternate foods. i might feed mysis shrimp, plankton, cyclops, or krill.. gives variety..

 

[WingnutSr]

What works really well for me at feeding time, is to shut off all the pumps. I have found that this helps give the food a longer "Hang Time" and makes it easier for the fish to catch, and eat most if not all of it. It does away with it blowing all over. When done, turn the pumps back on.

 

[cuddle fish]

Thank you all for your input. Kevin, interesting what you said about the nutrients in the frozen water with the brine shrimp causing algae. My tank is slowly recovering from an incredibly bad infestation of algae EVERYwhere. By the way, what is wrong with zooplankton? I haven't used it yet since I bought all the other food.

 

[bertoni]

What kind of zooplankton product are you feeding?

Variety is good for the animals, so a rotating schedule is a good idea, in my opinion. You probably just need to feed less. How much live rock is in the tank? For that size tank, with about 125 lbs of live rock, maybe a 1/2 cube of frozen Formula 1 per day would be a good start, as a point of reference. Then perhaps a similar-sized chunk to each of the anemones a few times a week, or less.

I'm not sure why the crabs and snails died, but it wasn't the nitrate.

 

[Am4nn]

The clowns will also feed the aanenomes if they are fed. THhis is one reason they spend so much time in them.

 

[cuddle fish]

I have about 100 lbs of live rock and the zooplankton is Kent Marine Zooplex.

I've been feeding about 1/4 cube of food or less dissolved in (a cup of aquarium) water before feeding. Maybe I'm starving them now, but I was basing it more on the number of tank inhabitants rather than tank size.

If the snails and crabs didn't die from the high nitrates, I wonder what killed them all. (2 crabs and 3 turbo snails) And let me tell you, the worst thing was having to smell a dead turbo snail....ewwwwwww!

 

[bertoni]

I wouldn't dose the ZooPlex. I didn't think much of the ingredients list. You could consider DT's Phytoplankton, if you have animals that need small-sized food.

The snails and crabs might have encountered a predator or perhaps had an acclimation problem. Hard to say.