How much do you feed?

[mr.salty]

Hi guys I just wanted your opinion on whether or not I’m over feeding my tank.

My stock list is:

2 yellow juvenile tangs (2 inch max)
2 clowns
A larger purple tang
Small foxface
9 Wreck fish
7 green blue chromis
5 bangai cardinals
Flame angel
Two cleaner shrimp
Four red leg hermits
Around 20 various snails
Orange spot goby

This is in a 240 gallon system that is running at:

0.25 nitrate
0.02 phosphate

Plus the other measurements but they are all stable and within my parameters I am aiming for as I have adopted WWC’s parameters etc.

I run 300ml of rowaphos which I replace every two weeks, have a large external skimmer that has the “black tea” skim in the cup and I do 10% water changes a week and a refugium that has chaeto growing in it, I would say the fuge is around 15G and currently has enough chaeto in there to be the size of a basketball at least.

My issue is I still have algae in the tank, not a lot but still bugs me, as my RODI is 0 TDS I must be over feeding?

I feed through the day three cubes of frozen like mysis or krill etc plus seaweed which is like quarter to half a sheet of the ocean nutrition seaweed.
I substitute the frozen on alternative days with a feed of pellet or flake once a day also.

I feed reefroids and vitalis LPS pellets once a week but only have three LPS frags so do not go crazy with this.

Is this too much? Fish seem to eat all the food every time, they do not mess about when it comes to feeding!

Just wanted peoples thoughts really? Just scared about loosing the anthias if I cut back feeding that’s all. Let me know how much you guy feed your fish!

 

[CC13]

Hi guys I just wanted your opinion on whether or not I’m over feeding my tank.

My stock list is:

2 yellow juvenile tangs (2 inch max)
2 clowns
A larger purple tang
Small foxface
9 Wreck fish
7 green blue chromis
5 bangai cardinals
Flame angel
Two cleaner shrimp
Four red leg hermits
Around 20 various snails
Orange spot goby

This is in a 240 gallon system that is running at:

0.25 nitrate
0.02 phosphate

Plus the other measurements but they are all stable and within my parameters I am aiming for as I have adopted WWC’s parameters etc.

I run 300ml of rowaphos which I replace every two weeks, have a large external skimmer that has the “black tea” skim in the cup and I do 10% water changes a week and a refugium that has chaeto growing in it, I would say the fuge is around 15G and currently has enough chaeto in there to be the size of a basketball at least.

My issue is I still have algae in the tank, not a lot but still bugs me, as my RODI is 0 TDS I must be over feeding?

I feed through the day three cubes of frozen like mysis or krill etc plus seaweed which is like quarter to half a sheet of the ocean nutrition seaweed.
I substitute the frozen on alternative days with a feed of pellet or flake once a day also.

I feed reefroids and vitalis LPS pellets once a week but only have three LPS frags so do not go crazy with this.

Is this too much? Fish seem to eat all the food every time, they do not mess about when it comes to feeding!

Just wanted peoples thoughts really? Just scared about loosing the anthias if I cut back feeding that’s all. Let me know how much you guy feed your fish!

If your fish are happy and your water parameters are in check, then you are doing just fine. Usually I try and feed more but smaller portions if I can and the food is usually gone in 30-45 seconds except if I feed Nori where it lasts several hours before the Tangs are done with it.

Anthias need to feed 3-4 times throughout the day so its good you do this for them.

 

[SPR1968]

It doesn’t sound like over feeding to me at all, I feed 3 frozen cubes every day, 1 dose of dried pellets in the evenings and occasional extras from time to time. I also add Red Sea Reef Energy, every day or other day.

And I have a lot more fish in my system than yours and mine is around 175g

You’ve got the GFO in there but maybe the zero reading is because it’s been used as food by the algae. Maybe scrape as much as you can out and increase the GFO amount/change time ? It doesn’t sound or look like you have to bad a problem.

Great looking tank by the way, very nice indeed!

 

[ReeferReefer]

What is your filtration system like? You could be over feeding but you have a good amount of fish in the system. Maybe you could try to cut it down to 2 cubes a day and see how the animals and tank respond? If it was me I would keep feeding your current amount and try to address the nutrients via export.

If you are having nutrient problems you either need to reduce input or increase output. There are a variety of nutrient export methods in the hobby today that should be able to match your current feeding, given your tank size.

 

[mr.salty]

Thanks for the info everyone and glad to know I am on the right track its still very much early days for the tank (running around 6 months)but I just want to keep algae to a minimum, have big fat healthy fish and thriving corals. I mean who doesn’t right? Haha

I was thinking of increasing the GFO steadily or change it every water change and see what happens? I don’t want to dose anything like no3po4X as my fuge is growing well and don’t want to strip everything out of the system as I have LPS?

I did have many months ago an issue with the TDS of my RODI, also I am sure the caribsea life rock and sand I have used had a lot of silica in it which has taken time to remove but that has been sorted so hopefully things are on the up!

Just nice to hear from other people as feeding is so variable with everyone there is no documented standard as such like with other parameters or equipment we have on our tanks!