What to feed tank? (Thanks Frag Swap!)

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aumfc

New member
I just began stocking my 24g Nano last week and decided to come to the frag swap Saturday. I sure am glad I did! I left with 17 frags. I think I bought something from every table! Here's the list of all I got (as best as I can remember):

Teal w/ Orange Zoas
Neon Green Large Zoas
Blue Ridge
Green Spotted Mushroom
Blue Zoas
Purple Sea Whip
Candy Cane (2-head)
Candy Cane (3-head), different colors
Green Hairy Mushroom
Red Zoas
Green Digi
Blue Mushroom
Yellow Polyp
Green Spaghetti
EvilMel's Green Skirts w/ Yellow Polyps
Kenya Tree

I also got a little piece of some sort of plate coral?? I'm not sure what it is.

Everythings has opened and looks great so far with the EvilMel's mixture being our favorite, but just barely. There is so much and it's all very nice.

I already had two stalks of xenia, a four-headed Frog Spawn, a large feather duster and 2 false clownfish. For a cleaning crew I've got 2 nassarius, 2 astraea, 2 blue-legged hermits. (Is this enough?)

My big question now is, what food/supplements should I be adding to the tank and how often to keep these guys happy?

Thanks to everyone I talked to at the swap,
Jason
 
Most softies do not need special feeding (a lot of them consume particulate materials, dissolved materials and bacteria), but stony corals and gorgonian (sea whip) should be fed, according to Eric Borneman and many other experts. Your yellow polyps, hairy mushrooms and feather dusters probably enjoy some tiny sized food, too.

A lot of reefers uses Cyclop-eeze, Golden Pearls and oyster eggs for their corals. Eric Borneman has his own coral food recipe to which he uses various seafood.

Here's what Eric Borneman wrote on feeding reef tanks:
http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic20086-9-1.aspx

Tomoko
 
Thanks for the information Tomoko.

So, if I feed some Cyclop-eeze and Golden Pearls the corals will be ok? Then feed some brine shrimp for the fish and larger guys? That sound good?

How often should I feed? Morning and evening or just evening?

Thanks,
Jason
 
I recommend feeding other frozen food than live or frozen brine shrimp. They are not nutritious enough. Mysis shrimp is a lot better choice. Take a look at this Melev's primer on fish food:
http://melevsreef.com/feedings.html

Be careful not to overfeed, though. Your tank is so small that all you need is just a tiny (I mean "TINY") bit of Cyclopeeze or Golden Pearls just a few times a week. Fish should be fed very sparingly once a day. Fish can go without food for days actually. They are very good at pretending that they are starving so don't fall for their tricks of looking cute and wagging their fins. Overfeeding leads to a high ammonia and/or nitrate level which leads to an algae problem for sure, if not sick tank inhabitants.

Tomoko
 
seventeen NEW frags at once seems to be a big bio-load on a 24 gallon system - to be honest I kinda wonder if a smaller tank can successfully house seventeen corals, not to mention what you probably already had in it. Let us know how it goes for sure
 
I have a lot of algae now I think:

IMGP1537_800x600.jpg


IMGP1538_800x600.jpg


What can I do?

Thanks.
 
It looks like diatom or cyano growing there. I'd try a couple of Mexican Turbo snails if your astraea are not cleaning up the stuff.

Tomoko
 
Thanks, I'll try them. On another note, what do you all think of Aguarium Imports (I think) down near Outback on 31 in Hoover? Is AD better?
 
Personally, I would not put turbos in that tank. They're kinda big and clumsy for a nano cube IMO. Plus, they don't eat cyano if that is what you have.
How long has the tank been set up and fully cycled? Most new tanks go through some diatom or cyano spells. I have no problem with the amount of frags in the tank, although that many at once can sometimes be an issue in a small tank.
I'd look for some cerinth snails. They're underrated for what they do. They are small and nicer looking than turbos and have been known to eat cyano.
Check your phosphates. Where are you getting your water? Is it RO/DI? Water changes in a small tank are critical since you don't have the advantage of running a big skimmer for some help. Concentrated addatives such as Cyclop-Eze are great, but they can screw up your water in a second if you overdo it.
I'd consider some additional water movement too, or at least re-direct some flow over the problem areas.
Keep your water quality as high as you can, and keep your parameters stable. Keep you lights on a timer and be careful about feeding. If you decide to feed your corals, I'd back off of the fish food quite a bit.
Be patient and good luck! Sounds like you got a hold of some nice stuff there!
 
If you have hermit crabs, cerith will be their lunch in no time. I like nassarius snails for stirring the sand to keep it clean. Fighting conch is known to eat cyano (according to Dr. Ron Shimek). Hermits will usually leave these alone because they disappear into sand really quickly. Fighting conch will stick out their snout from sand and eat the cyano on the sand surface. I will use just a few small Turbo to clean up algae and diatom if your Astraea is not doing the job. The stuff on your rock look more like diatom to me than cyano.

Tomoko
 
Thanks. So, maybe I will try some turbos to get rid of this stuff and then maybe get rid of them later if they are too big. Nothing seems to be eating this stuff now and I'm not 100% sure the astraea are even able to get to where this is building up.

The tank has been around 4-5 weeks. The flow is pretty good, I think, and this is sprouting right under the nozzle.

Thanks again.
 
I've never had a problem with blue leg hermits and snails. Red legs are another story. I think they are more native to the Atlantic and seem to be more aggressive.

Since your tank is so young, I'd concentrate on keeping the water perfect and I'd expect some diatoms or maybe even a bit of cyano as the tank matures. I don't think I'd add anything else, especially fish, for a while.

Good luck and happy reefing.
 
A Fighting conch won't last a month in a Nanocube, even a 24G model. Just not enough to eat.

And FWIW, Turbos will not eat cyano. If I were in your shoes, I'd pull out all the hermits you can find and replace them with ceriths, which may eat cyano and definitely will eat the heck out of diatoms. The hermits, even blue-legs, are omnivores and will decimate most of your microfauna in the tank. They may eat algae first, but they -will- eat just about anything else they can catch, too.

Change about 10G of water per week, and do not pour any of the packing water from frozen foods into your tank. And as twkenny said, don't add anything else (fish, other inverts besides snails, corals) until the tank matures a bit more. A period of diatom and/or cyano growth is very common with 'new tank syndrome'.
 
I should have said non cyano type algae for Turbo instead of just "algae". Cyano is bacteria not not algae. If cyano gets really bad, you can use things like Red Slime Remover or Chem Clean to get rid of it, but you really need to address the underlying cause of it to prevent a future occurrence.

I had a small fighting conch that kept my 29g clean for a while. Yes, they do run out of food and die, but mine kept growing and did well about a year in my 29g. When I moved it to my 120, it died in about three months. It was probably twice as big as the initial size.

Cerith is a great choice for reef tanks in more than one way. This summer I noticed a bunch of baby cerith in my 120 (about two weeks ago.) I believe they are babies from the batch I got from Aquatic Island with the group buy we did a few months ago. I was looking for my collonista snails (teeny-tiny Turbo like snails) I got from Lucy's Lagoon (during the May meeting) one night and found a whole bunch of baby collonista and baby cerith!! Astraea, Turbo and other grazers disappear from our tanks eventually, but cerith and collonista will keep on showing up year after year :)

Tomoko
 
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