NPS feeders in a mature system

[shullat]

Having little or no experience with NPS feeders I was wondering if anyone could respond to the following question, would it be possible to maintain filter feeders in a mature tank with a sizeable refugium supplying amphipods, copepods, etc... to the main tank with little to no additional feeding?

 

[username in use]

Probably not

 

[corriekuilder]

In my opinion it is possible,but only if you have access to clean nsw,and a proper skimmer,other than that,not a good idea.

 

[username in use]

Here's the thing, even if you are producing a lot of pods in a large healthy fuge, lets say you get one of the easier NPS like a sun coral that only needs a few feedings a week at a minimum. You are talking about having enough pods flowing through the water column to randomly line up with your sun coral so that each head gets 2-3 pods at least 3 times a week. Those are some heavy odds against you. They really need to be spot fed, or you need to broadcast feed the entire tank which you may not want to do in a tank not dedicated to NPS corals.

 

[shullat]

Here's the thing, even if you are producing a lot of pods in a large healthy fuge, lets say you get one of the easier NPS like a sun coral that only needs a few feedings a week at a minimum. You are talking about having enough pods flowing through the water column to randomly line up with your sun coral so that each head gets 2-3 pods at least 3 times a week. Those are some heavy odds against you. They really need to be spot fed, or you need to broadcast feed the entire tank which you may not want to do in a tank not dedicated to NPS corals.

If a mature refugium were in place, weekly water changes done with NSW, and a weekly broadcast feed were used, do you think it would then be possible?

 

[username in use]

I use natural salt water, It doesn't really add much in terms of planktonic food for the reef that Ive noticed. I think its more important to ask what corals do you want, and then we can go from there deciding what you would need to do to care for it.

Even sun corals need more than once a week, and that broadcast feeding is likely to be their only meal for the week.

 

[shullat]

I use natural salt water, It doesn't really add much in terms of planktonic food for the reef that Ive noticed. I think its more important to ask what corals do you want, and then we can go from there deciding what you would need to do to care for it.

Even sun corals need more than once a week, and that broadcast feeding is likely to be their only meal for the week.

Thanks for the info Joshua... will keep it in mind...
I'm not to keen on going full NPS, but hope to have a few, although at the moment I don't have anything particular in mind as I have to see what's available here. I already have a one Tubastrea micrantha and two Tubastrea faulkneri. They have been with me for well over a year and are obviously showing only slight growth, but at least there is some...