Drip feeding Corals

[Byron]

http://algaescrubber.net/forums/show...ight=automatic
Hi Guys,
Have been reading the above thread and another regarding (on this site) feeding corals. I have been absolutely stunned 1. by how much I need to feed them & 2. how regularly. My question is-can I set up a simple drip feed of coral food (ATM using Reef Roids) to feed my corals? I know this is not as accurate as a dose pump but would be light years ahead of my once a day feed! Wouldn't it? Is anyone out there using this method?
My tank at the moment is going through monumental changes ever since I have installed my ATS, shut down my skimmer and now feed more. This seems like the natural progression for the newly converted, which I well and truly am!
Cheers Ben

[SantaMonica]

As long as your scrubber can keep up, you can feed as much as you want. Usually liquid food needs chilling, but if the roids does not, then I guess you don't need to chill it. I'd start by feeding 1 ml per day, per 10 square inches of screen.

[Byron]

Thanks SM, I'll set it up tomorrow!

[Ace25]

From my experience, you can't drip coral food. The reason being is when it is wet it will gum up a drip line (at the valve were you set the drip rate). You will spend all day playing with the valve and it still won't work. You end up not dripping anything, or dumping in most of the container in a few minutes. A dosing pump is really the only way I know of to push coral food through an airline with any consistency. You can get dosing pumps for $30 on ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dosing-pump-...item256f522f59

[SantaMonica]

The thing with that pump and most similar ones, is that it's slowest rate is 20ml per minute. So to get 1 ml you need to run it for just .05 seconds, and that's your dose for the whole day. To divide that up over 24 hours, you'd have to run it for .0021 seconds every hour.

That's why I prefer the pumps that can dose 0.1 ml per dose, so at least you can divide up 1ml over ten doses for the day.

[Ace25]

Good eye. I missed that part. Still, it has a potentiometer to control the output. There is no reason you can't do like I did with LED lights and have a "master pot" and a "slave pot" to slow down to output. Instead of 20-70ml you can install a second Potentiometer after the first one and cut it down to 2-7ml per minute, cost maybe $2 for the part.

[Garf]

I can see how a constant feed system is "ideal" but is it necessary? If you have NPS the I can see an advantage (perhaps a must), but generally, I think 4 feedings a day should be more than enough in a regular system. I think the quality of the food is the main problem, not the frequency, (in a standard system).

[SantaMonica]

Most corals feed at night. And a 100 gal tank of corals can consume a pound of solid food per day. Acro's in the wild can grow 20 inches per year on this natural amount of food. So the goal is to try to see how to feed as much as possible.

[Garf]

Most corals feed at night. And a 100 gal tank of corals can consume a pound of solid food per day. Acro's in the wild can grow 20 inches per year on this natural amount of food. So the goal is to try to see how to feed as much as possible.

Conceded. If my Monti digi grows that much, I am screwed.

[Byron]

Hey SM,
Why don't you just design a scrubber with an automatic coral feeder? LOL