Q's about feeding

[Jezze]

Ok, Im not sure if I am physically feeding my tank right.  Heres my inhabitants: 6 scarlet legged hermits, 6 astrea snails, 1 big snail(not sure what he is.. hes about 1.5 inches wide), a green chromis, and a peppermint shrimp.  Heres what Ive been doing.  Every night.. about 30 -45 mins before I turn off the lights, I drop a few slivers of a formula 1 cube(maybe a fith of a cube) into a small cup with tank water.. let it thaw a little, then stir it up to break everything into small pieces.  Then I just dump it into the tank.  The chromis swims around eating only the floating pieces(he wont touch anything thats fallin onto the rock or sand.  The peppermint shrimp jumps on a few of the larger pieces.. and the crabs and snails eat the other chunks as they find them.  Heres my questions.

 

Am I feeding them enough?  will the sponges and feather dusters get food through this process?  What about the food that doesnt get eaten right away?  its always gone when I turn the tank lights on in the morning.  Should I be feeding more often?

 

Thanks a million guys(and gals).  You all helped make my tank possible  

[Sahin]

Well, the feather dusters (if you mean the tiny ones) and sponges should get plenty from filter feeding.

 

I would cut down on the feeding a little.  Try to get less falling on the gravel.  I tend to find that if there are food lying around, most of my hermits will go for that instead of eating stuff they find on the rocks, same goes with the other critters.  Some food falling to the gravel is fine, but just make sure its not significantly contributing to the bio-load/nitrates etc.

 

There isnt really much I can add to this becuase I havent got a fish in my reef tank yet.  I just feed tiny bits of frozen prawn to my plate and bubble corals, and of course the shrimp comes over for a few bits.

 

I have various tiny feather dusters and sponges that i dont even target feed, I think they et what they require from the water itself.

 

As for the feather dusters, if you got the big ones, from what I read, these are hard to keep as we cant feed them properly in our tanks.  They dont get any nutrition from light, only from filter feeding from the water.  But reading around tells me that there isnt enough in our tank water to feed them adequatly and they tend to die after a while.