Nps on live foods?
- Thread starter jamierk
- Start date
Thanks mike
It just seemed to me that live cultures are relatively easy to support with low cost equipment or reasonable support from an LFS. Plus I would think you would have less issues with nutrient export due to water fouling. I guess the unknown is how much of each you would need to feed to provide sufficient nutrition.
Thanks
Jamie
It just seemed to me that live cultures are relatively easy to support with low cost equipment or reasonable support from an LFS. Plus I would think you would have less issues with nutrient export due to water fouling. I guess the unknown is how much of each you would need to feed to provide sufficient nutrition.
Thanks
Jamie
uhuru
New member
Jamie, check out this thread: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1811725&page=252
Somewhere in there they were talking about live feeding systems and even had some interesting diagrams for setups.
Somewhere in there they were talking about live feeding systems and even had some interesting diagrams for setups.
victor_c3
Premium Member
Over the last couple of years I've been thinking about setting up an NPS tank and I figured that I'd go the live food route. A big benefit of the live food route (aside from the long-term cost savings) is that you won't foul up your water as bad by adding live organisms as you would by adding non-living food.
I don't know if you'd be able to fully support your tank on just live food (I read an article a while back and, if I recall properly, a lot of nps corals and gorgonians get much of their energy/nutrition from detritus), but you would be able to take a serious dent out of the monthly cost of feeding the tank if you were to grow your plankton and rotifers (which can be readily done).
I found the below articles on plankton and rotifer cultivation:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/aug2002/breeder.htm
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/sept2002/breeder.htm
From what I read, you'd want to cultivate a couple of different varieties of plankton (mainly Nannochloropsis oculata, Chaetocerous gracilis, and Isochrysis galbana). Each of these different planktons have different nutritional profiles and, if you are to breed rotifers, they are only as nutritious as what they eat. I haven't done the math on how big of a culture container you'd need for your plankton, but I'd immagine you could do it easily with a 3-6 liter continious system to support a 100 gallon NPS tank.
I did do the math for how big of a rotifer culture container it'd take to support a 100 gallon NPS tank on a continuous system and it works out to be about 3.5 liters (although I'd go closer to 6 liters just for some fudge-room). That math was done assuming you'd be growing Brachionus plicatilis.
So I'd start by setting up four culture containers. One for each strain of plankton organism and another for the one strain of rotifer I planned on growing.
Just to be clear, I haven't actually done this yet. I've only been doing a bunch of reading so far!!!
I don't know if you'd be able to fully support your tank on just live food (I read an article a while back and, if I recall properly, a lot of nps corals and gorgonians get much of their energy/nutrition from detritus), but you would be able to take a serious dent out of the monthly cost of feeding the tank if you were to grow your plankton and rotifers (which can be readily done).
I found the below articles on plankton and rotifer cultivation:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/aug2002/breeder.htm
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/sept2002/breeder.htm
From what I read, you'd want to cultivate a couple of different varieties of plankton (mainly Nannochloropsis oculata, Chaetocerous gracilis, and Isochrysis galbana). Each of these different planktons have different nutritional profiles and, if you are to breed rotifers, they are only as nutritious as what they eat. I haven't done the math on how big of a culture container you'd need for your plankton, but I'd immagine you could do it easily with a 3-6 liter continious system to support a 100 gallon NPS tank.
I did do the math for how big of a rotifer culture container it'd take to support a 100 gallon NPS tank on a continuous system and it works out to be about 3.5 liters (although I'd go closer to 6 liters just for some fudge-room). That math was done assuming you'd be growing Brachionus plicatilis.
So I'd start by setting up four culture containers. One for each strain of plankton organism and another for the one strain of rotifer I planned on growing.
Just to be clear, I haven't actually done this yet. I've only been doing a bunch of reading so far!!!
victor_c3
Premium Member
One more thought:
Plankton safe skimmer. From what I've been able to find, Tunze offers some skimmers that are relatively plankton safe. Models 9206 and 9211, according to an answer I got on the Tunze forum on reefcentral are the most plankton safe with models 9006, 9011, 9016, and 9021 being semi-safe, but not as safe as the 9206 and 9211. This would allow you to maximize the ammount of live food in your water column without having to time your skimmer you turn on and off throughout the day.
Plankton safe skimmer. From what I've been able to find, Tunze offers some skimmers that are relatively plankton safe. Models 9206 and 9211, according to an answer I got on the Tunze forum on reefcentral are the most plankton safe with models 9006, 9011, 9016, and 9021 being semi-safe, but not as safe as the 9206 and 9211. This would allow you to maximize the ammount of live food in your water column without having to time your skimmer you turn on and off throughout the day.
aninjaatemyshoe
New member
I'm not quite sure what qualifies a skimmer as being "plankton safe." All skimmers, no matter what the design, basically do the same thing - make bubbles. Since these bubbles are capable of carrying away small planktonic organisms, as you can see from examining skimmate, I don't see how anything that claims to be a skimmer could make the claim to be "plankton safe." I suppose skimmers that are smaller/less productive at removing waste would be more "plankton safe" than the cone/bubbleplate/meshwheel acrylic monstrosities that the hobby is currently adopting.
Personally, having expended much effort trying all sorts of alternative waste-removal systems, I don't think there is anything more useful than a powerful skimmer, especially on a high waste system such as an nps tank. However, I would not discourage trying alternative methods. I'd just suggest that if you're going to go the live food route with a smaller/weaker skimmer (or none at all), you should try it with a small system first instead of doing something on the scale of 100 gallons. IMO, small nps tanks are considerably easier (and cheaper!) than large ones.
Personally, having expended much effort trying all sorts of alternative waste-removal systems, I don't think there is anything more useful than a powerful skimmer, especially on a high waste system such as an nps tank. However, I would not discourage trying alternative methods. I'd just suggest that if you're going to go the live food route with a smaller/weaker skimmer (or none at all), you should try it with a small system first instead of doing something on the scale of 100 gallons. IMO, small nps tanks are considerably easier (and cheaper!) than large ones.
victor_c3
Premium Member
Everything you mentioned is correct, however, according Tunze's literature and their rep on the Tunze section of this forum, some of their skimmers utilize passive diffusion to seperate the circulation circuit of the skimmer from the main system water. I haven't seen a Tunze skimmer in person, but it sounds as if the models I mentioned above have some sort of a membrane that water/nutrients difuse accross through osmosis. Depending on the characteristics of the membrane (i.e. microscopic hole size) this makes sense to me.
Below is a link to the thread I posted on the Tunze section of this forum.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1970785
Below is a link to the description of a tunze 9206 and 9211 skimmer. The second paragraph down (under the heading "General Information") describes the "plankton safe" operation of these models of skimmers.
http://www.tunze.com/149.html?&L=1&C=US&user_tunzeprod_pi1[predid]=-infoxunter029
Based on the description of the product I'd immagine it would only be effective for removing disolved nutrients and it wouldn't touch some of suspended particles like the detritus that many other skimmers would remove. However, that sounds like an environment most coral reefs have - low ammounts of disolved nutrients and relatively high(er) ammounts of suspended nutrients (like plankton, detritus, etc).
If I had the money at the moment, I'd love to buy a 9211 skimmer and give it a test to see just how "plankton safe" it is.
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aninjaatemyshoe
New member
Based on the design image from Tunze's website, I think you're right about there being some sort of membrane or other barrier that prevents certain plankton from being sucked into the skimmer. I say certain plankton because I doubt were talking about a sub-micron sized filter that would prevent things like microscopic phytoplankton and bacterioplankton from entering the skimmer. However, that design seems like it would be less likely to suck up larger plankton.
You could also probably achieve similar results using a more powerful skimmer. You would just need to keep the skimmer isolated from the rest of the system using some sort of permeable barrier, such as filter floss.
You could also probably achieve similar results using a more powerful skimmer. You would just need to keep the skimmer isolated from the rest of the system using some sort of permeable barrier, such as filter floss.
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