So I’ve been thinking a little about this with my establishing a feeding regimen for corals.
It makes sense to start a tank of with a skimmer while you have fish and while building maturity, but once you get to that point, wouldn’t the space be better utilized to make the refugium larger? In the early stages you want to reduce nutrients to let bacteria build up to be able to handle nutrients, so it’s beneficial to pull excess fish poop out. Once you add corals, the fish poop feeds the corals so when you are pulling the poop out you are just making more work for yourself having to feed the corals separately, right?
At this later point, aren’t you just making more work for yourself by increasing the food requirements of the system if you’re having to supplement all these powder and paste coral foods which also end up being pulled out by the skimmer instead of focusing more of your limited sump space on pulling out the particles which have already broken down beyond the point of food (nitrates and phosphates) by utilizing more macro algae? It seems additionally beneficial to allow these smaller particles to continue to flow to feed the smaller polyps which cannot catch the coral foods.
It makes sense to start a tank of with a skimmer while you have fish and while building maturity, but once you get to that point, wouldn’t the space be better utilized to make the refugium larger? In the early stages you want to reduce nutrients to let bacteria build up to be able to handle nutrients, so it’s beneficial to pull excess fish poop out. Once you add corals, the fish poop feeds the corals so when you are pulling the poop out you are just making more work for yourself having to feed the corals separately, right?
At this later point, aren’t you just making more work for yourself by increasing the food requirements of the system if you’re having to supplement all these powder and paste coral foods which also end up being pulled out by the skimmer instead of focusing more of your limited sump space on pulling out the particles which have already broken down beyond the point of food (nitrates and phosphates) by utilizing more macro algae? It seems additionally beneficial to allow these smaller particles to continue to flow to feed the smaller polyps which cannot catch the coral foods.