"Feeding the Tank"

[flaunt]

ok i think i'm sold on this idea. lately i've been doing bi-daily feedings of dt's phytoplankton as well as brine shrimp nauplii fed with dt's just before feeding to the aquarium. occasionally i would feed some of the larger-polyped corals and inverts small bits of shrimp pellets which they consumed readily. tonight i decided to feed shrimp pellets to the entire tank. i didn't just dump them in, i put about a dozen in a small amount of water in a plastic container and mashed them up in the water while they were softening, eventually resulting in a brown mush. i then drew the water up in a little feeder bottle and target fed the corals. i didn't worry about excess bits that made it to the bottom of the aquarium or the rocks... the shrimp, crabs, and snails were more than happy to go after the excess, which i knew they would, but what surprised me was the other critters in the sandbed that suddenly appeared! my small brittle star started poking his arms out onto the sandbed, and tons of spaghetti worms showed up... i knew i had a lot of white ones but i started seeing really cool orange and red ones that i didn't even know were in there. i also saw a bunch of little bristleworms come out for some food... who knows what else came out that i didn't see. i've heard people say, "if you don't 'feed the tank' you're starving your critters..." to think that all this time these little guys were in there probably barely making it! i'm going to do this more often, but i'll have to be careful i guess (or will i?) since the aquarium is small and i don't use a skimmer or any mechanical filtration (just weekly partial water changes).