Discussion of the Week: What to feed the tanks?

[Geoff]

OK, lets try this topic. This one comes up a lot.

What is the best thing to feed to our tanks?

G~

thanks for the idea Awestralian

BTW- if anybody else has any ideas for a discussion, please PM me.

[gregt]

Lot's and lot's of cash.

[kwjones]

Phosphate laden flake food?

[kwjones]

Hmmm...the best thing to feed your tank? A lot of it depends on what you have in the tank. Some fish are carnivores, some are herbivores, some omnivores...some coral needs very little food, some need more...

Blender mush coveres a lot of the bases. I also like using Cyclopeeze, but a little goes a long way.

Kevin

[tims]

i agree with greg and kevin. cash and a mix of things, i like using reef gold..sorta like marinesnow..

[Geoff]

what are the most common types of food we feed to our tanks?

G~

[Witfull]

hmmm feed the tank?...is that like feeding the DSB?

my fish..all 2 of them,, pretty much fend for themselves, i feed once a week or so, the Dorsalis fairy wrasse and the maroon clown are active hunters and always plump.everything else feeds of of their waste and my lights.

[tims]

i hate using flakes for my Fish, everything gets either blender mush, or pellets and or nori........ok... i do give them a trat once in a while , i get some ghost shrimp and let them have fun....

[Awestralian]

We use flake, frozen brine shrimp, frozen marine dinner daily, and nori/sea veggies every other day.
The algae eaters obviously eat crap off the back of the tank, which i never clean...(except for when the tanks were moved a few months ago).

[kwjones]

I'm a sucker for today's marketing of convenience foods...Every two to three days, I alternate frozen Formula 1 and Formula 2. Once a week I put a few drops of thawed out Cyclopeeze. I'll clip a sheet of nori inside the tank every once in a while when I remember to.

I keep telling myself that when I run out of Formula 1 & 2, I'll look up the recipie for Blender Mush that I have bookmarked and feed them that instead, but I seem to go buy more Formula 1 & 2 again.

[cath]

Originally Posted by Witfull

hmmm feed the tank?...is that like feeding the DSB?

my fish..all 2 of them,, pretty much fend for themselves, i feed once a week or so, the Dorsalis fairy wrasse and the maroon clown are active hunters and always plump.everything else feeds of of their waste and my lights.

That's pretty much what I do. I only have a tomato clown, a serpent sea star, a few snails and a hermit. I admit that I've been lazy about not making blender mush. I recently got Tetra's Spirulina-enhanced flakes. Only feed 3 or 4 flakes and watch Ms. Stripe eat them. Maybe I could add that into the blender mush for nutrition?

[Awestralian]

Oh and i gotta pick up silversides for the lionfish, and also for the snowflake moray we'll be puchasing soon.
I have infrequently used cocktail prawns (small shrimp) from the store, ie ones for human consumption.

[Ray1214]

Well I do the Blender mush and I have some good recipes that I published somewhere on some website. Actually did a whole lecture on it once for the reef club, without chopping up my fingers too.

I tend to customize my mush for each of my tanks. Depending on what i have anyways. I have worked with a few people including Sanjay Joshi, Anthony Calfo, our own JennM, TDWyatt, to come up with a few things that may be bad or not good. Like rinsing out all of the packing juices of frozen stuff.

I like to use Kalkwasser once a week as a thawing medium for my mush, since I think it helps put the calciourous content into the foods like most fish in the ocean are used to. At least once a week one of the feedings uses a mixture of DT's phytoplankton and Reef Plus or Microvert (whatever the mood), to try to cover the corals and clams.

Since I usually have a batch of BBS anyways for my pipefish and Dwarf Seahorses, I normally add a cup ful to the batch. (a cupful of bbs laden water usually yields I am guessing about 1/4 tsp of bbs to add to the mix). I have used cyclopseeze as well.

I also like to do a live feeding every two weeks or so. Some feeder guppies for the main tank, maybe some live brine shrimp or some live ghost shrimp, or my puffers get a fresh clam that I have cracked open or some snails from petco (They let me clean out the pond snails from their tanks for free).

I also pull gracileria from my pipefish tank. I use it as a growout tank for Red Gracileria, since the pipefish like cover anyways. My Tangs gobble this stuff like spagetthi.

I used to use it in a HOB refugium but it grew too slow and I think chaemothorpa is a better choice, even though the tangs seem to find it a bit unappetizing.

Ray

[kwjones]

I really like the idea of live food, but it scares me. I've seen what's in the tanks at some of the chain stores, and there's NO way I'm putting that in my tank. It's such a huge opening for introducing all sorts of disease and parasites.

I'm sure I could grow my own in a 10 gallon tank or something like that, but I'm pretty sure the wife would refuse to let me feed them to anything.

[Geoff]

our ghost shrimp holding tank has some guppies in it by accident. Nikki will not let me feed these to the fish when the ghosts are finished. somehow there is a difference between the guppies and the shrimp on the cuteness factor.

ok, we hit on the fact that flake is not the greatest because of phosphates. why else is flake not necessarily the best food?

G~