1. Food Quantity for animals, 2. Cleaner Shrimp died.

[jenm]

I got a 6 gallon Nano from a friend with his water and live sand. I put cured live rock in and added a cleaner shrimp, brittle starfish, and a purple firefish. It's been going a month now and doing well.

Except that recently it started getting brown stuff all over the glass and lots of "junk" on the bottom of the tank. I read in here that those are diatoms. Yes, I've been using tap water.

 

Since I also read that nutrients were not getting exported at a fast enough rate I decided to cut-back on the food I was giving.

 

This leads me to ask:

 

1. Can someone tell me how much exactly and how often (ix/day is best for me) I should feed for the following animals:

 

1. Cleaner Shrimp

2. Purple Firefish

3. Brittle Starfish

 

I don't have any corals yet. I'm planning on buying some this weekend. Would that make any difference?

 

---------------------

2. My lovely Cleaner Shrimp just died. Boo-hoo.

The tail was seperated from the body. Is it possible that by reducing food the purple firefish attacked the shrimp? They both were always energetic when it came to feeding. There always was extra food on the bottom from over-feeding (I assume) so I assumed the Shrimp was eating that after he caught whatever he could catch while the food was falling.

 

thanks.

jen m.

[onthefly]

Welcome Jen,

 

The diatom problem is something that often plagues new tanks. As long as you parameters are ok...just let it go and it should burn itself out. If you are seeing elevated nutrient levels.....do a couple of w/c over the course of a 3-4 days to get them down.

 

As for question #1 - I feed my cleaner "1" pea-size flake of fish food every day. I just drop it in with tweezers and he runs up and grabs it right out of my hand. Feed the firefish a few (2-4) flakes a day (depending on size of the flake), some people go every other day, just preference and how often you do w/c's. Don't worry about the star....he'll get plenty of food from scraps and detritus.

 

Corals don't add too much to your bioload (compared to the fish), but for most corals, they don't need to be fed directly. Some people use products like DT's or Cyclop-eeze....the results of feeding can be very rewarding. Keeping that in mind, the more crap you put in (feeding), the more crap you have to take out (w/c's). Make "totally" sure that your tank is stable and completely done cycling before you put any corals in.

 

Lots of people say their shrimp "just died" and later find out they just molted!!!! Make sure that he's not hiding somewhere and look close at the remains to make sure it is not just the exoskeleton. I doubt the firefish jumped the shrimp, but if it did die, the firefish could have dine on him postmortem.

 

HTH

[Physh1]

All that is good info. I would also recommend starting to use something other than tap water. DI water, RO water, or distilled are great replacements for tap. Tap can be unpredictable, insafe, and problematic in many ways concering tank health.