Refugium- recycling cheato as food for main tank tangs

[JIM260]

I got into a debate recently with a LFS person of whom opinion I respect. But I cannot see the logic in his point.

I like to pull cheato out of my refugium and put it into my main tank as a snack and all day grazing stock for my 5 tangs. They get 4 feedings a day of normal food in addition.

Besides the tangs liking it, it also keeps me from removing huge amounts of detrivores that live in the cheato in my reugium from my "sysytem" that I worked hard to propogate.

His point is that I am never exporting the nutrients via cheato prunning, that I am recycling.

By feeding them Nori on a clip I am importing nutrients into the tank thru fish waste. What the heck is the difference where it comes from? Nutirents consumed by the fish is... nutrients consumed by the fish.

Thoughts?

 

[Angel*Fish]

Your argument makes sense to me - the only thing I can think of is that if our tanks have higher concentrations of "bad stuff" (other than nitrate) that is also being picked up by the chaeto then the nori might be better since it presumably comes from pollution free seas

[Of course then there's the argument that live food - the chaeto may be healthier than the dried nori
But then of course there's the argument that chaeto may not be the natural food for tangs....]

Unless I'm mistaken i think the ocean does "recycle"

 

[JIM260]

Thank you for the input Marie.

(Im sure paired fish "do" have more fun!)