Phytoplankton Dosage?

[BonnieB]

Brand new to marine reef world. 4 months in with LR, LS, hitchhikers, snails, sand sifters, a couple clowns and shrimp. The tank cycled beautifully and hitchhiking mushrooms are growing great! I have a bunch of copeopds but I haven’t started adding coals yet to allow the tank to properly mature and ensure stability. I’ve been reading and researching how to grow and maintain the copepods, which my clowns and sand sifters love, by adding phyto. With a 32.5 gallon AIO I don’t want to over or under feed them and there is soooo many differing opinions that I’d love help from some who have already gone this route? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Subsea]

You can’t overdose phyto. I dosed it with lights on and the tank was dark green. Within 2 hours, it was crystal clear.

 

[DaJMasta]

I'd go with 10mL to 300mL daily for live or maybe 0.25mL to 3mL of concentrate daily.

Hard to overdose live, not so hard to overdose concentrate, it will get consumed fairly quickly so if you want it to be a regularly available food, it needs to be more than once a week. The more you dose, the more you have to check your salinity because it will creep up with the saltwater component being added.

 

[BonnieB]

Thank you both. Question, I have read several places that it could take up too much of the oxygen and The fish would suffer, is that a possibility?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Thank you both. Question, I have read several places that it could take up too much of the oxygen and The fish would suffer, is that a possibility?

Seems very unlikely to me. Adding fish foods would use a lot more O2.

 

[Subsea]

Thank you both. Question, I have read several places that it could take up too much of the oxygen and The fish would suffer, is that a possibility?

I guess anything is possible. I choose to dose during lights on to observe the process. With live phytoplankton, the opposite is true. During photosynthesis, phyto will consume co2 and expire oxygen, the same as algae & coral.

 

[BonnieB]

Thanks all for your patience as I ask these questions! It’s amazing how many opposing opinions there are for reefing! Since everyone seems to be good, I will continue to dose and monitor! Thanks again for your help and advice!

 

[Subsea]

“It’s amazing how many opposing opinions there are for reefing”

Welcome to r2r with the forest & the trees.

Stick to your guns and start a tank journal on members tank forum.

 

[BonnieB]

So my secondary question as a newbie is does the dosage differ if you’re just feeding pods as opposed to feeding corals or a combination of the two?

 

[Uncle99]

So my secondary question as a newbie is does the dosage differ if you’re just feeding pods as opposed to feeding corals or a combination of the two?

It really depends on the concentration of the product.
So, reef nutrition live Phyto is quite thick so 20ml per week is plenty.

 

[BonnieB]

Thank you Uncle99. Primarily feeding pods right now for my sifters but I have a bunch of mushrooms starting to grow from my live rock. I’m trying to learn best practices!