How often do you feed phytoplankton...
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I add about 1 ounce using algae barn phytoplankton. I met the guys who sell it at RAP NY and bought it from them and they advise it would be good enough on a single dose. I just do it once a week as it seems to work for me. I have a 75 gal tank with a 30 gal sump.
Jolly Roger
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LobsterOfJustice
Valuable Member
No.
All commonly available corals in the hobby do not eat phytoplankton. Zooplankton eats phytoplankton, but you don’t have any zooplankton in your tank because it would all get filtered out or eaten before you could maintain a sustainable population. This is why people have to raise things like phytoplankton, rotifers, brine shrimp, and planktonic copepods in a separate system. True, most tanks have copepods and amphipods, but these are benthic (live on the locks/sand), not planktonic, and the algae they eat is likely benthic too.
Coral reefs are largely devoid of phytoplankton - that is why the water is so clear. There are plenty of things that eat phytoplankton in the ocean, but most don’t live on reefs, and they would require constant dosing to stay alive in an aquarium.
kinetic
Valuable Member
Filter feeders could benefit. If you, for example, have a small enough clam that can't get enough from just light because the mantel isn't big enough yet, phyto is necessary. I've had to keep one in a glass bowl in the display tank, and daily pull the bowl out of the water, and dose straight into the bowl and let the clam filter for awhile. It was a lot of work...
So I guess it's just a scam when your sold phyto when buying pods? Ok. I agree with kinetic and I feed it a couple times a week. Algae barn or algagen. Plus I get a feeding response from some corals so by that I believe there enjoying it
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FreeEnergyReefer
Active Member
No not a scam phytoplankton creates oxygen in the water column along with lowering nutrients and yes your corals do eat it. Just incase someone stumbles upon this page on a Google search and gets discouraged
Lavey29
10K Club member
SpongeBob and Patrick have to eat something
There seems to be wildly different reports of the usefulness of dosing it. I've heard Mike Paletta talk about hobbyists he's visited in Italy that run systems where they dose massive amounts of phyto throughout the day, every day. These people have culture systems that are integrated into their tanks and keep it added constantly. Mike said that these people had acropora growth like he's never seen before.
I often pick one topic to research at a time, and this one fascinates me at the moment. There isn't a lot of discussion of it here, strangely.
I'm currently dosing 2 tsp of Reef Nutrition Live Phyto Feast to 100g daily now (for about a month). My initial observations have been:
I often pick one topic to research at a time, and this one fascinates me at the moment. There isn't a lot of discussion of it here, strangely.
I'm currently dosing 2 tsp of Reef Nutrition Live Phyto Feast to 100g daily now (for about a month). My initial observations have been:
- While I see people saying that dosing live phyto lowers their nutrients, I haven't experienced this. My phosphate has elevated a decent amount over the time I've dosed. I'm not absolutely certain that the phyto is the cause of my elevating phosphate, but I'm not sure where else it would be coming from.
- This one could be caused by anything, including chance. I did have a moment last week where everything looked absolutely great all at once, including all acros, LPS and shrooms. In this mixed reef, usually once I've got something peak happiness, it means something else will be "just off". I wasn't in the mood for testing all params, but I did anyway because I like to log params in moments like that. I found all params to be basically exactly as they've been for the last year or so; with the exception of the slightly elevated phosphate from dosing phyto. When I try things, I do them one thing at a time, and dosing phyto is the only thing different I'm doing lately. Who knows if phyto has anything to do with this stars-aligning event, but it's plausible.
davidcalgary29
2500 Club Member
I dose phyto twice a week, but not for coral growth, although the gorgonians do seem to enjoy it, but for control of nuisance algae and cyanobacteria. I feed heavily, and have relatively poor nutrient export systems in my AIO tanks, and I find that phyto tends to assist with this.
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