Need help on how to feed often

[Mikenroe]

Okay so I've been reading a lot, and it seems that when people are feeding a couple times a day, there corals do better along with fish. Is there a way to feed throughout the day without buying a auto feeder? I would like to be able to feed reef nutrition and or frozen. I read somewhere where someone floated a plastic plate with drill holes and would put the food in there and then over the coarse of an hour to half hour the fish would eat the food as it floated out and less was wasted, plus his sun corals would stay out all the time because he floated food like four or five times a day. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I don't know about your basic assumption. Feeding a couple of times a day makes for better coral and fish. Not saying it's wrong, just saying I'm not sure that it's true either.

I feed every 2 or 3 days and I find that a mature tank and feeding a wide variety of foods has worked well for me. If I fed 3 times a day only the aggressive fish would get any food as I'd have to be feeding less per meal.

 

[C.Eymann]

it really depends on the kind of fish you keep, if you have fish like anthias or chromis then feeding 2-3x per day is a must. As long as you have a good, correct sized skimmer and have a good waterchange schedule then you won't end up with a nutrient problem. However it's important that you gradually increase feedings, for example going from 2 cubes of food per day to 5 cubes the next could cause a nutrient spike, however if you increase gradually over the course of a few weeks, your system/bacteria adjusts and you generally won't have an issue.

I am a firm believer that regular/daily food addition leads to healthier fish and faster coral growth as long as the nutrients are kept under control.

just my .02