Do you really need to turn pumps off to feed?
I just use a feeding ring and sinking food..
A little background. Tank was set up in March of 17. Skimmer running from day one and biopellet reactor added around three months in. Carbon running in a BRS reactor from day one and gfo added a few months in due to algae and phosphate issues. Around April of 18 I started losing all of my sps. It sounds bad, but it was a couple of montiporas and a few small frags of birdsnest I tried. Then my lps started to bleach and die. I lost most of them as well. At some time during all of this gfo was stopped gradually, because phosphates were under control. My biopellet reactors screen got a hole in it and was slowly dumping a few pellets a day into my sump in some rock rubble so I didn't notice them, I just thought they were being consumed. Now phosphate issues started to arise again and battled I them for a while.
A few weeks back I refilled my biopellet reactor as it had gotten "œlow" and siphoned the sump around the rubble as normal. To combat coral loss I started feeding reef roids and reef nutrition R.O.E. Every three days. Within a week I had a massive bacterial bloom in the water column, milky white water but no thick snot like slime on the rocks. I let it work itself out for a week. Skimmer was going nuts and every 8 hours it overflowed and literally looked like bubble bath added to a jacuzzi. If you have never seen this it was pillows of foam overflowing into the sump, obviously because of all the bacteria. and when I didn't I pulled all equipment out of the sump and took half the pellets out, pulled all the rubble out and deep cleaned the sump, this is when I found the pellets that escaped. Finally, I added a UV sterilizer to kill the bacteria in the water column off and polish the water, prepared to fight ammonia and nitrate/phosphate issues from this if the arose. Water cleared overnight and my levels showed nothing. I mean 0 ammonia, 0 nitrate and 0.00 phosphate. Ammonia and nitrate are tested with api kits because I have never had a trace of ammonia after a cycle completed and I usually run about 5-10 nitrate so it is accurate enough for that. Phosphate is tested with a Hannah checker. I had my LFS test my water and verified the numbers.
Sorry, long read. Now comes to the point that I turn my return pump off to feed. I have never in the past shut anything down at feeding time, but somehow now I am running a system that is too clean. I shut off the return when I feed nightly because of target feeding the corals. I know a lot of people will say to feed more, but I currently feed two cubes of mysis, a chunk of rod's pacific plankton and two gourmet grazers of nori a day. Plus the reef roids daily at the advice of my lfs to get some nutrients in the water. Nitrates and phosphates still read 0 every day but one, when I got them up to 5 and .05. They were back to 0 the next day. Corals are looking better with the feeding and I have plenty of fish, truthfully I am very overstocked, so there is plenty of fish poop. All fish are plump, happy and healthy so they are getting enough food.