Who feeds tangs from their refugium

[jeffnsa]

One thing that always bothered me was putting nori into a tank to feed my tangs and throwing away my live stuff from the refugium. I had grape calurpa, ramosa, and cheato in my fuge that people said to never feed to the fish because it would release junk back into the water but then add nori which will add junk into the water. I decided to grap a hand full of calurpa and threw it into my display when I added a new a new tang a keep it in there for a couple of days and within 24 hours most of it was gone. I added another small handfull everyday and the new tang and the others never got ick which they usually do evertime you look at them wrong. I only got one other person to try feeding macro from their fuge and he noticed the same thing about ick and they seemed much healthier.
How many others do the same thing instead of buying nori and have you noticed a difference in their fishes health.

 

[mwilliams62]

My Naso tang devors the Red Grape calurpa when I was trying to go it in the DT so I had to take it out because it is a slow growner and put in the Green grape he took care of the grape part of the plant but did not touch the leaf part of the plant. My yellow tang will not touch either one... Go figure.

 

[Bretts05jeep]

Calurpa will be very hard to remove if your fish dont eat it and it gets rooted

 

[JSeymour]

I do feed a limited amount to my fish, but I grow macros, specifically for feeding, like Gracilaria and Ulva(just got this). They are much more nutritious and don't have allelopathic toxins(so I've read) like many Caulerpa species. I'm not sure if these even affect fish, as they are designed to poison corals and other algaes, but I decided to stay away from them.

As far as recycling nutrients by feeding homegrown macros, I don't see a problem with it.These nutrients are already in the system, so gross nutrient totals do not change directly. By feeding outside sources of algae, you are introducing new nutrients to the system, i.e. the gross nutrient total increases. Of course don't feed every sprig of algae to them, you need to be removing some of this algae for nutrient export.

 

[KYLEJ]

Ill grab some caulerpa from my sump every now and again and feed it to my salfin tang. Havent noticed any issues with it.