Feeding Too Much? Not Enough?

[ShaggyRS6]

Just a quick question about feeding. I have a 100 gallon tank, mostly LPS. The wife is feeding a pinch of flake and a few pellets at 10am and the same at 1pm , this is in the main for the Anthias. When I get home at 4 I feed have a cube of Brine, the other half i feed in small portions between 5 and 9.

How does this sound? I only just started the daily 10am and 1pm feed recently since the Anthias arrived. Just wondering if what you folks with the same fish load think.

• 1 x Kole Tang
• 2 x Clowns (A Pair)
• 1 x Mystery Wrasse
• 3 x Bartlett's Anthias
• A healthy CUC

 

[Terri Caton]

Hmm, this is a tricky question. Some feed very light and some (like me) feed very heavy. It really depends on whether your fish look happy and your nutrients stay in control or not. I prefer to feed heavy and export a lot.

 

[ShaggyRS6]

Does it sound heavy? I mean the fish destroy everything. The stuff I do in the evening, the half cube is literally no waste

 

[Terri Caton]

Some people go by the amount of time it takes their fish to eat all the food. Again, some say 1 min and some 5 min. You can do an experiment and see how much they'll eat in say 2 min. If they have finished all of the food before then increase it to 3 min. When you get to the time they seem to ignore it then that's enough.

 

[Dragon52]

I believe the only fish you have that really need multiple feedings a day are the Anthias but if you don't have much getting to the sump or filter you're probably just fine.

 

[minus9]

I'm a firm believer in multiple feedings throughout the day, if you can? These don't have to be large portions and they certainly don't have to be the same food each time.
For me it's always been heavy import and heavy export. Just make sure you have a mechanism to export efficiently, either a refugium, skimmer, water changes, etc.... Feed what your fish will consume within a couple minutes or shorter. I feed LRS 3 times a day, 2 types of pellets 3 times a day and nori or macro algae once a day. There's at least one or two days a week that I feed a little less, but not much less. But that's just me.

 

[Jesterrace]

Multiple small feedings per day beats one daily feeding, regardless of the fish IMHO. The one thing I would recommend though is changing up the food source. Brine is notoriously poor in the nutrient/nutrition department and Flake and Pellet food don't offer much diversity. LRS Reef Frenzy is what I feed my Lyretail Anthias and it does well with it. I also do a daily Seaweed/Nori Feeding and that seems to work well.

 

[nereefpat]

From what little I've seen of Bartlett anthias, they are Really active and can probably use all the feedings they can get.

As far as overfeeding, as long as you don't have bad algae problems and your N&P levels are acceptable, then you should be fine to feed all you want.

 

[Daddy-o]

I try not to feed pellets/flakes or Brine shrimp. I feed frozen mysis, marine delight and occasional blood worms. Every day they get a carnivore breakfast, nori lunch, and a carnivore dinner.
Cheers! Mark