feeding question

[dannyboy]

My current set-up is a 75g fowlr with only a niger trigger, a blue throat trigger. I feed only frozen food on a cube for breakfast and 1 for dinner diet. I swear they want more, I think they would easily eat 2 times that. I added a harlequin tusk wrasse today, (beautiful fish!) and am wondering am I not feeding them enough, should I bump it up to 2 cubes at a time? Thanks again all.
Danny

 

[Bifferwine]

How big are your triggers? 2 cubes a day is a lot. To put it in perspective, I have 30 fish in my tank, including a 15-inch vlamingi and an 8-inch pink tailed trigger. The whole tank gets 7 cubes a day.

If your water parameters are good (nitrates are close to 0) and you aren't having algae problems, then you can continue feeding that way, but I think that you may start having water quality problems in the future with that feeding regimen.

Fish always act hungry. I've never seen a fish turn down food.

 

[cumminz]

My damsel turns down food all of the time. she will only eat 3 spectrum pellets a day

 

[dannyboy]

The niger is about 4 inch, the bluethroat, well, she's maybe 5- 5.5 inch. Never had an algae problem. Can't seem to ever get the nitrate's below 10-15 though. Have a good skimmer and plenty of cheato also. The harlequin is also about 4-5 inch. I'm feeding mysis shrimp and spirulina mostly, the cubes are like 3/4 inch cubes, I'm assuming we are using the same food. It just gets eaten so fast worried they are still hungry. Thanks again

 

[cumminz]

IMO i doubt your fish will starve

 

[Rcpilot]

I feed an entire cube to my little 30g tank daily. It's got 2 fish. A 4" goby and a 1.5" clown. They get a few pieces and the rest gets spot fed to corals and polyps. I feed a pee size amount to the 6-line in the 5g daily. My nitrates in both tanks are zero (0)

 

[fatman]

I feed an entire cube to my little 30g tank daily. It's got 2 fish. A 4" goby and a 1.5" clown. They get a few pieces and the rest gets spot fed to corals and polyps. I feed a pee size amount to the 6-line in the 5g daily. My nitrates in both tanks are zero (0)

:bounce:Sixty pound of live rock and 60 pounds of live sand in a 3o gallon tank makes zero nitatres seem quite possible. Congratulations. :^:

 

[Rcpilot]

:bounce:Sixty pound of live rock and 60 pounds of live sand in a 3o gallon tank makes zero nitatres seem quite possible. Congratulations. :^:

Yup!

It baffles me when I see people making posts about high nitrates. They have no DSB and no cheato or other macros. They have 1lb of rock per gallon or 1.25lbs at most. And they can't figure out why they have high nitrates. :shock: DUH!! Water changes ain't the way to solve a nitrate problem. Water changes puts a bandaid over a severed artery. You ain't solving sh*t. You're covering it up. Like taking cough medicine to cure pneumonia. Looks good on paper, but in reality it is only prolonging the inevitable.

I over feed my tanks DAILY. EVERY SINGLE DAY I dump in about 50% more food than my fish actually need. The rest of it gets eaten by crabs, corals or dissolved out and skimmed. I've NEVER had a problem with nitrates after my initial cycle. I don't even test for nitrates anymore--maybe once a month for giggles. ZERO.

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I know DSB's work and so does cheato. Still can't understand why people even ask the question: "How can I reduce nitrates in my tank?"

Hint:
Starving your fish and doing large water changes ain't it, Gomer.

:Cheers:

 

[fatman]

I understand where your coming from. I feed gross quantities of live food food in my SPS mother colony display tank and its attached refugium and I have no nitrate readings ever above zero. I have a deep sand bed, grow algae on a reverse lighting cycle and skim heavily. I have less live rock than is typical, but I did not remove the rock I started with (180 to 200 pounds or so) until after my deep sand bed started maturing. I waited until it was capable of eliminating all nitrates then started removing a little every month. I replaced it with coral heads that were in general mounted on smaller live rocks. All rock considered I probably have 75 to 80 pounds in a 120 gallon tank. But I have over four hundred pounds of aragonite sand. And the rock I do have in the tank is even less dense and more porous than the lightest Fiji live rock. Volume wiase the rock in my tank is probably equivalent to the volume of 120 pounds of Fiji live rock. I am planning on slowly replacing that rock with even lighter "worm rock" starting fairly soon.

 

[Rcpilot]

I'm going to set up a 90g tank sometime in the next yr. I wanted to get lightweight rocks. I have decided that I want about 150--180lbs. Probably start with about 180lbs and remove rocks as I stock it and it becomes more mature after a yr. or two.

Do you think Fiji is the lightest stuff available?

Whats "worm rock"?

 

[cumminz]

the worm rock, if i am not mistaken, is created by worms and weighs 1/2 of what fiji weighs and you get twice the surfqace area for the same amount of weight

 

[fatman]

Of all the natural live rocks normally available for sale I think Fiji is one of the least dense live rocks. I have not, however, checked out all the more expensive exotics that can sell for two to three times, or more, what Fiji can be obtained for. The maricultured live rocks are in general about 1/4 to 1/3 denser I believe. I have not actually done volumetric tests or tested for theiractual porosity percentages. Good mined rocks are undergoing the same course as aragonite sand under went. Origianally cheap until the suppliers found out just how much the market was willimg to pay. Aragonite used to be ship to the US east coast by frighters and sold as common building sand, it then graduated to play box sand and then CaribSea got involved and now it cost a great deal more than a mere decade ago. No more 50 pound sacks of aragonite play sand being bagged up and sold nation wide for $5 per bag. The only light weight base rock I know of now is the worm rock, or some decorator rock for really high prices.
Worm rock: calcium carbonate/calcite see it at this site http://www.mariculturetechnology.com/Rock.htm