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Thread: How much food?

  1. #1

    Join Date
    May 2012
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    USA
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    How much food?

    I am new here, saw Floyd's post on RC and found this site. I have a 72x24x26 (194g) DT with a coast to coast and silent fail safe plumbing system. I have a 60g sump that I have my return pump in a small chamber, the Dsb in one part, rock, and a small skimmer asm mini G (just took out a super reef octopus 3000). I built the UAS yesterday and have one CF light on it, it is in the middle chamber of my sump. I asked someone in my local club to help me build a regular ATS, but now that I have this UAS going, I like the idea, and it is quiet. I need to figure out lighting for it, not much of a DIYer, but really want LEDs on it for the sake of saving electricity. I would be thrilled to run a happy, healthy tank with a ATS.

    In reading the post here, I feel like maybe I'm starving my fish? it seems like people here feed there fish a lot of food. I am not one of those feed them every 3 days people, I feed them flakes 3x/day and pellets 1x/day from an auto feeder. Not much comes out as far as flakes when it runs. I give them 1/2 an algae strip (either red, green,purple or brown) every other day. I only started this week giving them some Rod's frozen herbivore food. I guess I'm looking for ideas on how much people feed?

    So in my tank are:
    Engineer goby ~9"
    Two adult clowns and there RBTA
    Hippo tang ~2"
    Yellow tang 5"
    Powder brown 5"
    Kole tang 3"
    Foxface 5"
    In QT are 2 bangaii and 2 chromis going in DT in 2 weeks.
    Misc SPS and lps coral, plate coral, 2 clams, some mini carpet nems.

    No one is skinny, but they do always seem to swim up to me when I am anywhere near the tank as if they are starving. Thanks for the input. I will be posting about the scrubber soon.
    Sheri

  2. #2
    Banned
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    Welcome to the site and once your scrubber is built and up and running and you get a feel for it's capacity, then you can start increasing feeding. I would not change much of anything until you get a good solid scrubber going. Then you can start pushing the food a little more and monitor.

    Remember that the UAS is still pretty experimental for the most part, so slow as you go is the rule.

  3. #3

    Join Date
    May 2012
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    Thanks Floyd, I won't change anything until I get a good ATS setup going. I'm hoping to have someone help me make the traditional kind or a box at least for the UAS, as it is just sitting in the sump. Hopefully I will get some growth on there in a few weeks. I also ave Gfo and carbon running and will keep it going until the ATS is fully running.

  4. #4

    Join Date
    May 2012
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    UK
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    Hi fiends.
    I watch our all your comments and now i want to share my comment that you must be give minimum food to your fishes.
    Because if you give more than food of their need the may you can face many problems.

  5. #5
    kerry's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2011
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    USA
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    The size of the screen determines the amount we feed. If your run a scrubberless tank your are correct about the feeding. Many of us have corals and want to feed them properly which is difficult without a scrubber so soak up all the nutrients. I like to have great coral growth and fat happy fish so I run a scrubber so I can feed heavy.
    150G. Reef/Mix
    125G. 3 Regular Oscars/1 Jack Dempsey
    75G. 20+ Africans
    40G. Fish/Reef. Algae Scrubbers on ALL my SW
    10G. SW Fish/Reef.
    10G. SW Hospital/new fish quarantine/pod breeder tank
    6 stage RO/DI system 200 GPD.

  6. #6

    Join Date
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    It is pretty easy to take care of your fishes needs with a scrubber. They would get along fine on what you are currently giving them, and you'd likely top out at the equivalent of 5, maybe 10 at most, cubes a day just for fish. There is no need to overfeed them. The thing that is tempting with a scrubber is to start feeding your corals directly with either liquid food or dry powdered coral food. When you do that, you can throw in as much as your scrubber will handle. This could result in really incredible coral growth. If you do start doing that though, recognize you may be pushing the limits, and may be more prone to having issues, algae and cyano outbreaks, etc, even with a scrubber that is working well. If you really want your tank to be easy, and aren't looking for incredible coral growth, just size your screen for 5-10 cubes, and automate top off and dosing. You'll be on cruise control in no time and should be able to enjoy your tank without a lot of work, aside from cleaning your screen every two weeks.

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