CrayolaViolence
New member
I would like to plan a 7 day vacation but need plankton dosed into my tank daily. Are there any simple to use liquid feeders out there that do a slow release that could do a 7 days worth of feeding?
Liquid feeders
- Thread starter CrayolaViolence
- Start date
heathlindner25
New member
A dosing pump is what you want .
shifty51008
12-5 Chiefs record
Why do you need plankton dosed daily?
But a doseing pump will do what you want but how are you gonna keep it cold? Unless you make your own
But a doseing pump will do what you want but how are you gonna keep it cold? Unless you make your own
shifty51008
12-5 Chiefs record
I guess if you make your own you could put it above the tank and setup a drip line.
CrayolaViolence
New member
Most of my coral is photosynthetic, and I dose my tank with plankton to feed them and the copods my mandarine eat.
CStrickland
New member
That's a little bit off crayola.
Do you want some advice about the whole dosing plankton thing, or are you like committed to it and you just want to know about feeders?
Do you want some advice about the whole dosing plankton thing, or are you like committed to it and you just want to know about feeders?
shifty51008
12-5 Chiefs record
So your corals need light, nps corals need to be fed
CrayolaViolence
New member
I asked because I would like to take a 7 day trip. Otherwise I feed my corals by hand every day. And yes, I know they need "food" which they also get but don't need every day. I use both reef roid and reef chill and some frozen copods for my mandarin in they are in the mood for them.
I plan on having a person come to check the tank for me every other day to do the solid feeding, but the plankton I was curious about, if there was a way to let there be a slow drip so that it's available in the water because the skimmer cleans the water out so well I'm sure there isn't as nearly as much as I need. I have a gonoporia, and it was not doing well until I started feeding it multiple times a day with a direct feed (plus put it close to the surface and light). Now it's almost as nice as it was when I first got it and it was near dead there for a while. My pipe organ is the same way, it likes to be fed directly, and has done wonderful since I started multiple small feedings on a daily basis to keep the plankton available in the tank.
I work from home so I'm able to give my reef plenty of attention. With the new tank set up (soon to be I hope) I'm hoping to have it set up even better with easier access. Right now, because my tank is so deep, I've had to move everything high up on the rocks so I can reach it.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2547342
yeah, you should not have 2 dragonets in that small a tank, ESPECIALLY one that is less than a month old.
yeah, you should not have 2 dragonets in that small a tank, ESPECIALLY one that is less than a month old.
shifty51008
12-5 Chiefs record
You have fish so you have fish food, their poo.
x2 on the mandarins. Too small a tank. Sorry to say.
Don't fear to leave a well-balanced tank unfed for a week. Get an Eheim fish feeder, set it up well in advance so you can fine tune it. Corals will eat light. The one or so that won't, will likely survive on fish poo. Adding phyto to a tank on a regular basis also adds phosphate, and that may encourage green film algae on your glass, I fear. I don't dose it at all, but if you get a general mix of flake food, or mix your own with Formula One and Formula Two (has green), in the Eheim feeder, I don't think you'd have anything to worry about. Gooshy food is probably better, but the flake does quite nicely on nutrition for now and again---you can't live life tied to the tank. Set up proper automations for topoff, light cycle, and feeding, and you're good for a week or longer. I can leave mine safely for a month, and I don't own a controller.
Don't fear to leave a well-balanced tank unfed for a week. Get an Eheim fish feeder, set it up well in advance so you can fine tune it. Corals will eat light. The one or so that won't, will likely survive on fish poo. Adding phyto to a tank on a regular basis also adds phosphate, and that may encourage green film algae on your glass, I fear. I don't dose it at all, but if you get a general mix of flake food, or mix your own with Formula One and Formula Two (has green), in the Eheim feeder, I don't think you'd have anything to worry about. Gooshy food is probably better, but the flake does quite nicely on nutrition for now and again---you can't live life tied to the tank. Set up proper automations for topoff, light cycle, and feeding, and you're good for a week or longer. I can leave mine safely for a month, and I don't own a controller.
CrayolaViolence
New member
It's a sixty gallon tank, they have them in much smaller tanks in twos and threes at the reef store. They have plenty of room to avoid each other and they each have their own places they hunt and eat.
CrayolaViolence
New member
Plus, I think one of them might even be female (haven't seen it display it's fin). Most of the time they just ignore each other.
:hmm2:
that's not the point.
your tank is FAR too young to have developed a sufficient pod population to feed ONE mandarin let alone two. They hunt constantly. When you see them pick at things doesn't mean they're getting a pod every time.
What the LFS has/does doesn't mean it's right...for them it's supposed to be a temporary situation before they're sold....right?
If the LFS jumped off a bridge does that seem like a good idea to follow?
shifty51008
12-5 Chiefs record
Lfs's also have 10 hippo tangs in 40 gal tanks.
A fish store as mentioned is only temperary, they buy fish to sell not to keep long term.
They will eat your pods faster than they will reproduce in your tank even if your adding phyto. A 75 gal tank with a decent size fuge that has been running for about a year is reccomended just for 1 mandrin.
A fish store as mentioned is only temperary, they buy fish to sell not to keep long term.
They will eat your pods faster than they will reproduce in your tank even if your adding phyto. A 75 gal tank with a decent size fuge that has been running for about a year is reccomended just for 1 mandrin.
CStrickland
New member
So, some bad news for you in here. This feeder thing is not a good idea b/c you really don't want to be cranking that many nutrients into a young tank. The rocks and sand will soak up the phosphate for a while, and then they'll be full and you'll have an algae problem that can take months to resolve while the rocks leach all that fertilizer back out. This is a mistake that others have made, and very much regretted.
Goniopora very much like to eat. You can shut off your flow and squirt some phyto/zooplankton/etc. at them a couple times a week. Othe coral like it too, it's just about balancing their needs with your ability to export the extra nutrients so the water doesn't get dirty and grow algae/make the coral mad. Targeting the food makes that a lot easier and with the flow to the skimmer cut you aren't wasting the food.
Last, and worst. You can't do right by those mandarins. They need to go back to the store so they can have a chance to find a decent home. They literally don't have a stomach, it's just like a tube. So they must eat constantly, like a couple pods a minute. A big tank with a lot of rock, or a properly set up fuge, gives the pods enough territory to keep their population up with a mandy constantly picking them off. Because they starve slowly, they'll survive at a lfs for a while. But you do see a lot of skinny mandys in stores and once they are that bad it's often too late. That works out good for the store cause they get to sell another fish.
There's just no way around it, the mandys physically need something you can't give them.
Goniopora very much like to eat. You can shut off your flow and squirt some phyto/zooplankton/etc. at them a couple times a week. Othe coral like it too, it's just about balancing their needs with your ability to export the extra nutrients so the water doesn't get dirty and grow algae/make the coral mad. Targeting the food makes that a lot easier and with the flow to the skimmer cut you aren't wasting the food.
Last, and worst. You can't do right by those mandarins. They need to go back to the store so they can have a chance to find a decent home. They literally don't have a stomach, it's just like a tube. So they must eat constantly, like a couple pods a minute. A big tank with a lot of rock, or a properly set up fuge, gives the pods enough territory to keep their population up with a mandy constantly picking them off. Because they starve slowly, they'll survive at a lfs for a while. But you do see a lot of skinny mandys in stores and once they are that bad it's often too late. That works out good for the store cause they get to sell another fish.
There's just no way around it, the mandys physically need something you can't give them.
Similar threads
