Feeding a desert tank

[Mr. Microscope]

Okay, I let this sit in the water chemistry forum for a while, but no responds.

 

Hello All,

 

I've noticed that throughout the life of my pico that corals seem to live okay, but never really produce and thrive. I'm afraid that I'm starving them. I am running a 3 gallon pico and have an extremely low nutrient system. I do small water changes daily which add up to a little more than 1 gallon/week. I have no fish an no inverts that require supplemental feeding. So, I never put food in the tank (but I do have refrigerated arctipods and frozen cyclope-eze laying around). I am running chemi-pure elite and chaeto in the fuge.

 

I only have softies and the polyps are too small to feed. I've been thinking about dosing amino acids into the tank for the benefit of my corals. What do you think? Is this a good idea or will it just be an algae booster and negate my attentive water changes?

 

Thanks in advance!

[beeker]

Stop changing your water everyday would be my opinion, your not letting the water have enough time to age, and with no fish or inverts there is no nutrients in the water, your replacing the chemicals for the corals though but once a week water changes are plenty enough to do that

 

i've noticed throughout the years that almost any tank that is under a year old really doesen't produce good growth results, i've noticed this on all of my tanks, not saying i don't get good growth before the year old mark but after a tank is a year old things really seem to take off

 

stability is key and daily waterchanges IMO aren't stable....

 

if i were you i'd look into dosing pythoplankton and oyster eggs

 

now don't go overboard and over feed but try feeding 2-3 times a week and see how the corals react keep in mind not to over feed or algea will happen, maybe do this and change the water only 2 times a week and see if things improve

[Mr. Microscope]

Cool. Thanks for the advice. What are your opinions on aminos? Waste of money or good supplement to feeding?

[Uhuru]

Continue the daily water changes, but start feeding your corals. Read the latest issue of Coral magazine which covers this very topic.

[beeker]

I've done a lot in the past and still to today the tryed and true method of proper Alk/Calc and Mag and weekly water changes is what i've always been a fan of as well as keeping my fish fed

 

i've done Vodka dosing and IMO it has the best results for any type of product out there, though i'd never daily dose it and i'd almost always keep it to a 1-2 day a week dose and no more, cause from my past experience 1-2 times a week will net the same results as daily dosing without any negatives

 

I've used aminos with and without Vodka with no noticeable effects, meaning i couldn't tell if there was anything positive or negative happening while dosing them, it could have also been because my Alk/Calc and Mag are more stable now than they were a few months ago when i did the amino dosing and vodka dosing

 

i still feel that i don't feed enough to my tank to keep dosing Vodka so i stopped that and at the moment am only doing Alk/Calc and Mag dose's as well as weekly 20g water changes

[disaster999]

for a tank with only softies i wouldnt even bother changing water once a week yet alone once a day. you practically have no bio load in your system and softies take up almost non of the chemicals in the water.

 

i wouldnt bother with amino acid for now and rather feed oyster eggs or phytoplankton or something with more "substance" (food particles for your softies to eat)

[Mr. Microscope]

Awesome. Do you guys still think this is the case with a three gallon pico?

[brandon429]

If you feed the tank a larger amount of frozen cyclopeeze based feed just before a 90% water change this will stop. but it will take time respond dont give up on the corals when you start feeding, benefits in 4 mos.

they go on photosynthesis of symbionts only for so long as you can see.

 

what you seek is dissolved nutrient control, not total nutrient control. there is no amount of times you can change the water that its harmful so overdo it if you want. conventional ways will work as well, these are just other options for quick results.

 

the water change is independent of the feeding issue but if you couple the two, its nearly magic in any reef 3 gallons and below. I have several pms from 3 gallon systems using this and c balance midweek and all the problems stopped. its not that c balance is the only way, its that the dosing is already known for any system 3 gallons and below using the weekly export feeding approach. + c balance

 

in 5 months you can generate coralline if you dose it

 

 

in oceanic systems water can be very low on dissolved waste and incredibly high in living and nondegraded feed which is the food for the corals.

 

our tanks tend to have high nitrate and phosphate in the water + a huge amount of bacteria and not so much plankton/suspended feed, its all the degraded (oxidized) waste from the excessive bioloads we run so the timed water changes and feeding are major step in changing the metabolism of your tank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

. I personally guarantee you if you run it this way the growth of your system will be controlled by the quality of your lighting and nothing else, track it in this thread to see~

 

its just one way that works, for 3 gallon tanks. it keeps algae away in high gear, feeds the tank in high gear, without polluting:

 

 

add some inverts for fun now, this method feeds them abundantly as well.

 

Sunday full water change.

 

 

 

monday in the morning before lights come on, dose: 2/3 capfull C balance Part A and then 25 mins later Part B into a high flow area, slowly added. Never add after lights on, if you forget to dose before lights on simply skip the round that day

 

tuesday skip dosing and topoff, wipe algae on glass and instantly remove any algae that starts up on your rocks, not by animal stocking but manually. It will lessen in time as the benefits of full changes catch up.

 

Wed dose

 

thurs skip dose clean/topoff/adjust tank

 

Friday dose

 

sat skip dose, I sometimes feed lightly at night and then change Sunday morning after it sets a good 9 hours. Or, I'll blast feed enough for a 100 gallon tank and fill every organism to its max and change out all the water in 4 mins, whatever I feel like doing, its versatile.

 

I usually do a giant feed/change Wednesdays instead of a dose to drive the corals for sick pictures. Even at two water changes per week at one gallon its less work than any other tank over a month's time...for a 3 gallon a nice technique is to feed lightly friday night, then lightly saturday night, then full change on Sun. That can get you one week service intervals and two shrimp and coral growth that will not be the same come summer I bet.

 

what kind of lights do you have man

 

I get c balance from marine depot.com

one set of 32oz bottles last you a year nearly $16.95

 

this is a beginning dose when ion command is low. it increases to 3/4-full cap when aged and packed.

[Mr. Microscope]

Wow! That was quite the post, and deserves a good responds. I will track progress here as requested and also on my tank thread. Hopefully, this will turn into a good resource for people like me who are trying to balance between a desert-like tank with no algae and one with thriving corals.

 

I'll start feeding cyclope-eze tomorrow. How much do you reccomend? I have lab equipment. So, I can be very precise.

 

I'm changing a total of about 5 liters/week spread out daily (exceptions Sat and Sun, so bigger change on Monday. Do you reccomend more with heavy feeding?

 

Also, would you reccomend target feeding my polyps (zoas/palys) or just squirt some into the stream?

 

I want to dose some phyto for the rest of my softies and filter feeders and to rebuild my pods. I'm only planning to do .15 mL phyto two times/week. Right now I just have crappy unrefrigerated Kent phyto, but I'm planning to get DTs.

 

Also, I haven't seen any pods in a while. Is it possible that I've killed them all off? Should I get some kinda coral from the LFS to try to rebuild the population?

 

Finally, I'm running a PAR38 for lighting. I just started covering up some of the lights to lessen PAR and get a little more blue in the tank.

[brandon429]

glad you would try it a good online test this w be.

I feed what would be considered a large amount of cyclopeeze. yes target feed, that allows you to keep huge dendro colonies and tubastreans

center your feeding around sat and Sundays building up to a full export...midweek you have photosynthesis and autotrophy to get by, this is not calibrated for fish as well just inverts. not sure about fish that would like a 4 days span of not being fed.

 

I don't see why you couldn't experiment with feed, but if you get an algae outbreak stop lol the ideal feed is marine bioplankton with cyclopeeze it covers a range of food web micron sizes it grows mass sponges in my bowls so I like it for all picos and it doesn't pollute in a blast feed. spotfeed mysis to whoever wants it...then ripchange.

 

this is merely trading off a little water change work with all the variables that can go wrong in taking it as smooth as possible right from the start. most picos don't make 12 mos because of that

 

when you get real confident after two years lessen up on changes lol

if you do them, you will get to two years bet

B

 

also here's a pic of your clean up crew, the bernzomatic flexible grill lighter. a cig jet flame lighter from 7 eleven is the same...

when you see an algae, its gone immediately. can I get a pic of your tank to assess the algal loading it would help to be able to predict how long it w take

[Mr. Microscope]

Okay, so here's a summary of my tank with a current FTS. Also, you can click on my banner to get to my thread.

 

You can see that a lot of my corals are closed due to some die off while I was away for Thanksgiving. Everything is recovering nicely though. You can see I only have z's/p's and softies right now. Today I started feeding a little cyclope-eze to my palys. Kinda difficult though. The pieces may have landed on them, but they didn't close up on the food. I still need to get a better source of phyto. What did you think about my question from yesterday about the pods?

 

FTS 2010.12.06

• Equipment
  3 gallon JBJ Picotope
  Hydor Pico Evo 180 Circulation Pump
  PAR38 20KK 80 degree optics
  AC70 Fuge with Chaeto, Marineland Stealth Pro 25W heater, Filter Floss
  Picotope Stock filter hung on side of AC70 dedicated to Chemi-Pure Elite
  1L gravity fed ATO
  5 lbs LR, 1/2" LS
  

• Current Stock
  CUC: 2 Ceriths, Feather duster, Some kinda of Hermit Crab, Colinista Snails
  Corals:
  Soft: Toadstool leather, Anthelia, GSP HH, Purple Cabbage Leather, green and orange Ricordea
  Zoanthids and Palythoa: Wham'n Watermelons, Zombie Eyes, Magicians, Inside Outs, Eye of Rah, Valentine's Day Massacre, Lunar Eclips, Kedd's Reds, Organisms, Red People Eaters
  

[brandon429]

Hey absolutely the pods will thin without consistent feeding. The best way to get some if you want them, they aren't required for tank success (ultra small picos don't always sustain them well yet Ive kept coral in a half gallon for three years) is to trade out some live rock it w be packed full of them from a LFS tank. you can also buy the IPSF.com seeding kits with gammarus etc that's great too. There are some still left in the system, and you can regenerate those naturally in about a year to some degree with this feeding approach.

 

The corals don't have to ingest the cyclopeeze as a whole particle to benefit from it. By feeding lightly on Sat and then heavily on a Sunday before a change, some dissolved nutrients are being added to the system and zoanthids will feed in this manner very strongly...the water change is removing it before plants can fix it.

 

it will allow tiny clumps of bacteria called floc to form in the system at microscopic levels and both the palys and regular zo's will eat in this manner. the spot feeders I always had to entertain were acans, all LPS, duncans etc everything else just grabs what it needs from suspension. also I should reiterate that I use marinebioplankton with cyclopeeze so there is a size range present thats different from just cyclopeeze alone but its a fine sole feed source if thats all you have.

 

lastly, cyclopeeze for sure doses Iodine to a system so it doesn't have to be added separately. I don't test for I but my inverts molt regularly and the feed is where they get sufficient amounts.

 

Congrats on your algal loading it is not bad at all your tank can be easily saved you prolly won't even need to burn anything it looks well cycled. just a bit hungry!

[brandon429]

I must also add something about LED lights, they are experimental and unproven in pico and nano reef systems although I recognize they are very popular for many reasons and the spectrum is improving as development improves. My point is when assessing coral issues LED lights makes for variables that cannot be pinpointed like can be when using conventional lighting we know works for sure. Im not debating the awesome looking-ness of LED's, they just haven't been tested long term on pico reefs and nano reefs and as long as professionals out there still cite works where LED was shown to be problematic I'll still be a skeptic, just my opinion. They may also indeed work just fine or better than flourescents nowadays.

 

What you don't see is a lot of nano reefs and pico reefs using them for years and years...so its experimental still.

 

 

If you look around on wetweb media per Anthony Calfo a couple years ago, he was talking about studies that showed some corals not responding well after a year under LED's and my point is nobody says that about flourescents and halides, those old tried and true heaters lol

 

I think if you do the feeding and dosing it will be fine just had to throw in the LED variable statement.

[pj86]

Mr. Microscope, very nice topic because I haven't seen info about mass/dose tank feeding on the web much. Here are my thoughts and suggestions. I believe there is no one single formula, because every tank houses different size corals, species and ecosystems. Some fundamental concepts that are necessary for success are the understanding of anatomy/physiology of the organisms being fed, metabolism/size and the interplay between livestock in our ecosystems.

For example, if you house multiple feather duster you will want to dose phytoplankton of a certain size usually 1-10 microns because this is the only type of particle food they will accept. The feathers essentially are filtering machines trapping large particles an discarding them, taking medium size particles and adding them to the tube, and taking small particles for food. They can also recognize biological composition of the food being presented. The metabolism of certain feather duster are variable depending on the species. If an organism grows quickly in the wild we know it is able to take and may require larger quantities of food to thrive. Also, if the specimen housed is large then it will need to be provided with more food and supplements. If provided with the food/supplements it will grow at a faster rate. Now when we dose a tank to feed these creatures not only dose the feather duster benefit but other creatures such as copepods will greatly benefit. The copepods in turn will eat the microscopic algae on the glass providing a better view of the aquarium. Once the copepods are fat enough they will provide food for amphipods which in turn will take care of detritus and larger decaying matter. The amphipods then become food for the fish in the aquarium. The waste that is produced from the fish has some biological benefit and will be consumed by the bacteria and algae. Bacteria die producing unusable nitrates. These nitrates will be absorbed or removed by mechanical filtration. That is one of the cycles a tank goes through. There are hundreds of more cycles that probably go on in our tanks that we aren't aware of, but each cycle has something in common, it tries to maintain a stable condition as long as there are living things in it and will always require some form of human maintenance for their survival.

Best suggestion would be to research on google scholar of some papers out there about the animals you want to take care of. You will find that many of the things we house in our aquariums are of scientific interest and benefit to humanity. Then with the info try to come up with a formula that works for your tank. Remember larger mouths will receive larger food and smaller ones smaller, so feed appropriately...lol.

 

Now my thoughts about dosing with ionic solutions (calcium, buffers.) By far I would consider these some of the harder things to master. I have not personally tried it yet because I don't house that many SPS. When dosing with ionic solution I believe it can affect a system drastically, very quickly, if not done correctly. Even our human bodies react extremely negatively to drastic changes in ionic compositions. I will need to get back to you on this one, once I gain more knowledge about how sea water composition and the outcomes of experiments.

 

My apologies for the long post but I believe the topic is not easily explained in a few sentences. Hope this will help.

[brandon429]

nice post well stated. long posts are great lol

 

my specific gravity is .023. higher than that and you have additional calcium which is not accounted for in my preset/no water testing dosing option for 3 gallon tanks.

[bananahands]

I didn't read the whole thread but it looks like your system is pretty much all softies. If thats the case you actually need to have "dirtier" water for the softies to thrive. An ULNS is not ideal for softies.

[Mr. Microscope]

Mr. Microscope, very nice topic because I haven't seen info about mass/dose tank feeding on the web much. Here are my thoughts and suggestions...

Hope this will help.

Cool. I've kinda had something like this in the back of my head, but never had it explained to me in such a simple way. Makes lots of sense. Thanks for this post pj86! Very educational.

 

 

I didn't read the whole thread but it looks like your system is pretty much all softies. If thats the case you actually need to have "dirtier" water for the softies to thrive. An ULNS is not ideal for softies.

Thanks bananahands! Great name!

 

I dosed a little phyto on Tuesday, a little cyclope-eze yesterday, and a a little of both today. That'll be it for this week. Gonna keep up with water changes. Doing 1.5L today and probably about 2L tomorrow before the weekend.

 

I like what brandon429 said about 4 months for results. Seems about right for this hobby. It'll be a good experiment. Hopefully, I can get this to work without a crash.

[Mr. Microscope]

Update:

 

My new feeding schedule is 150 microliters of phyto on Monday and Wednesday and a little cyclope-eze on Tuesday, and a larger dose of cyclope-eze on Thursday. I feed at the beginning of the day. Water changes are about 1.6 liters on Tuesday evening and about 2ish liters on Friday. I think some of my corals are looking a little plumper, but that might just be my imagination. My goal is for noticeable visible improvement in four months without algae buildup. Another major change I noticed in my fuge is that the chaeto is floating again and has bubbles in it. Before I cleaned it out, the chaeto was sitting on the bottom.

 

What wasn't in my imagination was the pods I saw today! Pods! Pods! Pods! It was so exciting to see life suspended in the water again. Since a cleaned out and readjusted my fuge, the flow in there is very slow. I think it's made for a good pod breeding environment. I probably kicked a few out of there during my water change today.

 

I found a sample pack of Coral Frenzy today. The grains are about a 50th the size of the cyclope-eze so I think it might be a better alternative or perhaps supplementation to feeding. Especially sine I don't have any LPS. Other near future plans involve finding a better source of phytoplankton (something refridgerated). I'm also thinking about starting a vitamin C regimen.

[kthehun89]

I'm just lazy and I desire to not read the rest of the posts, BUT I can say that dosing amminos is only polluting your water unless you are actively depleting the amino acid levels, like during vodka dosing.

 

about 2 months into vodka dosing, my SPS colors lightened considerably. Now, a weekly mL of Brightwell's amino acids has restored the colors...

 

most likely not your issue

[Mr. Microscope]

Success!

 

So, here we are four months later. I've had a complete turn around. I'm now feeding (about three times/ week) live phyto plankton, coral frenzy, and cylope-eze in heavier doses followed by an almost complete water change once/week. Additionally, I've moved my heater down to 76. My corals are getting much healthier and my zoas are actually getting bigger instead of fading away. Also, with the lower temp, I haven't had to clean my glass in weeks. It doesn't develop any green film, or at least it's doing it so slowly that I can't see it. I've added a few corals and frags in the last few months and the pod population is increasing well. I checked some of my chaeto under the microscope the other day, and as it was completely barren back in December/January, it is now flourishing with life!

 

Lessons learned:

In a fishless system, corals cannot thrive on photosynthesis alone. In picos, it's easy to do large water changes. So, you can feed the hell out of your corals and change out all or most of the water, hence avoiding algae and nitrate issues.

 

I'd call this experiment a success. Thanks to all for your suggestions!