Water wafers: Do you ever feed fish food flakes in your reef tank?

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

I've always used flakes (along with other types of food) and never thought they were "just for freshwater"...

 

[fishkat]

Water wafers: Do you ever feed fish food flakes in your reef tank?

Many reef keepers feed their tank with live foods, frozen foods, pellets, and other types of feed. However there seems to be a common thought that flake food is for freshwater tanks only. Do you ever feed flake food to your reef tank? Is there a place for flakes in saltwater tanks? If you do use flake food, when and how do you include flakes into your feeding program. If you don’t feed flakes, please tell us why not. Maybe there is a place for flake food in saltwater aquariums and maybe there isn’t – let’s talk about it!

Photo by @JumboShrimp

yes i vary their diet between live foods, pellets and occ flake foods.

 

[DaneGer21]

Flakes 90%, frozen 10% of the time. For 15yrs…

 

[SnazzyUrchin792]

Flakes are always part of what I feed

 

[SnazzyUrchin792]

But I feed frozen and reef-roids too.

 

[HankstankXXL750]

No I bought some, but don’t see much activity on the surface. I do feed some sinking pellets in one of my tanks and the love them. But feel they raise my phosphates too much so I don’t feed them in my larger reefs.

 

[G Santana]

Water wafers: Do you ever feed fish food flakes in your reef tank?

Many reef keepers feed their tank with live foods, frozen foods, pellets, and other types of feed. However there seems to be a common thought that flake food is for freshwater tanks only. Do you ever feed flake food to your reef tank? Is there a place for flakes in saltwater tanks? If you do use flake food, when and how do you include flakes into your feeding program. If you don’t feed flakes, please tell us why not. Maybe there is a place for flake food in saltwater aquariums and maybe there isn’t – let’s talk about it!

Photo by @JumboShrimp

I'm glad you posted this pic, I was looking for a spirulina flake today and saw this, I ordered this and the brine shrimp flakes.
I usually just add a pinch every so often but I'm going on vacation for 2 weeks in July and am looking to get an auto feeder so I'll test with these and pellets.

 

[killer2001]

I never intended to feed my fish flakes, but some of them absolutely love it, so I can't deny them. I'd say I'm about 75% frozen, 25% flake.

 

[pjr]

I do have a little jar of Marine Diet flakes that my fish love, which i use for variety along with some Coral Frenzy pellets. But Spectrum pellets is about 90% of their diet.

My fish are all 10-20 years old, so it works. They aren't super fans of frozen over the years, whether home brew or store cubes, so i dont bother any more.

 

[Nemo&Friends]

Voted other as I do not have a reef, only macro algae. But I do feed flakes to my fish and they love it. I do not do it regularly, as I give them frozen food most of the time, but when I am in a hurry, or want to give them a little change I give it to them. One thing I never feed is pellet, such a waste, sink straight in the bottom and is never eaten. Flakes sink slowly and fish have plenty of time to eat most of it.

 

[maroun.c]

I feed a variety of flakes in my daily food mix. Many fish love it and it adds to the variety. It also absorbs liquid vitamin additives faster than pellets.
I rely on flakes when trying to get finicky fish to start eating in QT and many fish would eat flakes before taking to pellets. I feel fish are use to picking debries from the water colum and flakes are closer looking to their natural foods than pellets. One nedisqdvantage is that flakes float more and tend to be sucked into the overflow .... so I soak them in liquid vitamins and they sink fast or turn off flow when feeding.

 

[entranced]

I ONLY feed flakes. Maybe some chopped shrimp here and there for the corals.

 

[schooncw]

I have always included flake.....Tetramin Large Marine Flake, to be exact. I also feed TetraMin Pro as well, as it is "meatier" than flake. I make my own frozen food and do not think it alone, would be adequate.

 

[H3rm1tCr@b]

I have found that pistol shrimp are obsessed with Hikari Sinking Wafers for freshwater animals. They are bigger, so harder for the fish to carry off, and they sink very quickly, allowing the invertebrates to each get a bite. Like seriously though, my tiger pistol worships them! He snatches them whenever possible.

 

[John J in Pickens]

#reefsquad - I have a Biocube 16 that has been running since 3/1/23 and has no corals in it yet, just 2 Oscellaris Clownfish that I have had for over 7 years. I also have a CUC (of sorts), about 5 small Astra snails, 1 small Nassariussnail, and bout 5 small blue and Red leg Hermit crabs. I'm thinking since I do feed the tank a small amount of Omega Sea flake food and Life Spectrum pellet food daily, it may be contributing to a heavy green filamentous hair algae that grows in the sand around the rock in the tank. It is very difficult to remove, too. (About once a week, I also feed the tank a small amount of frozen brine shrimp as well.) I had to literally dig the hair algae out of the sand with a little shovel with teeth at the end of the scoop, which really clouded up the water for the rest of the day, too. (This pic is an "after" photo, the "before" pic has hair algae that was 1-2 inches log and covered sand in the tank on three sides.) Anyway, I need to figure out how to minimize this hair alga before I start buying any soft coral. I currently do a one-gallon water change every other week. Do you have any suggestions or advice? TIA, John J in SC

 

[nereefpat]

I feed some flakes. Like pellets, they tend to have lots of ingredients. Really easy to use, and most if my fish like them if I stir them into the water instead of just dropping them on top.

 

[Idoc]

I've only ever fed frozen, never tried flakes or pellets. I'm not against trying the other foods, just never tried them!