Fishy Business

How does fish feeding translate into nutrients? N and P specifically!

enlighten said:
I do know some foods have the benefits of introducing trace elements into the tank, but I am wondering what you may do to keep your nutrient imports (N and P) as consistent as possible on a daily/weekly basis.
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I am not consistent with my applications of frozen foods. I do have use autofeeders.
enlighten said:
Do you use an auto feeder?
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Yes. One every tank, because I am lazy. Feeding the animals seems more important to me than keeping numbers in check.
enlighten said:
Do you use pre-portioned foods like frozen cubes?
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Nope.
enlighten said:
Are you taking nutritional analysis and converting the weight into PPM to calculate the exact amount added per feed?
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Nope.
enlighten said:
Or do you just eye-ball it and feed more when readings are low, feed more when readings are less?
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I don't think feedings should be correlated to readings. Feed what the animals needs, and deal with nutrients (if you feel you need to) some other way.
enlighten said:
I mostly feed TDO 2x/day and continue to bottom out my nutrients. So I bought frozen but am afraid of excess DOC and bacteria infections from overfeeding my nano. So I feed that about 1-2x a week and broadcast. I do have benepets to feed corals but have not done it consistently. Lastly, I started dosing ammonia bicarbonate to assist with nitrates. Currently between 5-10ppm nitrate, but now phosphates are being irregular and dropped to 0.02 from 0.07-0.09. I am not chasing a specific number, just want more consistency with my daily feedings to raise healthy fish and keep my corals happy as well. My target range is 5-10ppm nitrate and 0.04-.0.08 phos with some leeway upwards. I have neophos on hand as well in case it drops below that, as dinos seem to be a reoccurring issue in my system. Cyano is also having its way atm.
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I don't think you are going to get that consistency without a whole lot of work and expense. I also don't think you need that consistency and that likely such consistency is a snipe hunt. One of the reasons I like auto testers is that you can see what is going on over time and see some trends that aren't obvious when you manually test, unless you do that several times a day. One of the interesting things that autotesters have shown me is that stability is a range, so my phos jumps from .1 to .4 if something weird happens or I space on refilling my lanth. Nothing in all they system seems to care. Alk jumps a bunch too, but that makes more sense.
enlighten said:
Since the tank is still new, 4 months, but everything was transferred from a 1.5year reef, I assume a lot of this is growing pains until it hits maturity.
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Sure, there may also be some die of and bacterial population shifts resulting in more phosphate in the water, or the stuff moved over has some sequestered.
enlighten said:
Any insight is well appreciated. Thank you!
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:D
 
enlighten said:
This is what I was looking for, some soft numbers to reference (as I know its most likely not exact). Thank you for sharing this.

For the foods that don't list %phosphate, I will either not use them or perhaps use another value to assess that number?

In response to a lot of comments. I still don't prefer to over feed, especially since I mostly broadcast. I have always had issues over feeding my nano tanks, I attribute to increased DOC but that is speculation. I did bite the bullet and get the plank mini (beta unit) and some of their reef jerky. I may mix it with some dki and weigh out the proportions to feed 3-4x a day and using this calculator, get a rough estimates of my inputs via food. This will give me a value to work with that I can assess how much dosing I will need to meet my systems needed. Yes, this may be complicating the matter, but its fun for me or I wouldn't be doing it.

Thanks all for your input!
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Getting Phosphate from a label will be hard as it is not required on the panel.

Besides the ingredients, they only are required to proved the following GA.
  • Minimum percentage of crude protein
  • Minimum percentage of crude fat
  • Maximum percentage of crude fiber
  • Maximum percentage of moisture
When I made the TDO panels, I did not include phosphate.
 
Thales said:
I am not consistent with my applications of frozen foods. I do have use autofeeders.

Yes. One every tank, because I am lazy. Feeding the animals seems more important to me than keeping numbers in check.

Nope.

Nope.

I don't think feedings should be correlated to readings. Feed what the animals needs, and deal with nutrients (if you feel you need to) some other way.


I don't think you are going to get that consistency without a whole lot of work and expense. I also don't think you need that consistency and that likely such consistency is a snipe hunt. One of the reasons I like auto testers is that you can see what is going on over time and see some trends that aren't obvious when you manually test, unless you do that several times a day. One of the interesting things that autotesters have shown me is that stability is a range, so my phos jumps from .1 to .4 if something weird happens or I space on refilling my lanth. Nothing in all they system seems to care. Alk jumps a bunch too, but that makes more sense.


Sure, there may also be some die of and bacterial population shifts resulting in more phosphate in the water, or the stuff moved over has some sequestered.

:D
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This is basically what I do. Except I seem to have to feed more than my fish actually need to keep my nutrients up. Caveat, I don't actually test my nutrients but I can tell based on how my coral look.
 
There were only two people in this thread who claimed there is such a thing as overfeeding. I was one of them, so here is my response:

By having higher than desirable nutrient levels in the tank which unnecessarily pollutes the water while the animals do not seem to benefit from the additional feeding.

In fact, I significantly cut back on feeding from previous levels and I have not seen the fish losing weight a single bit (some actually continue to gain weight), or changing their behavior. But this is only my observation and I do not rely on this only.

If your water does not pollute due to a high coral to fish (size) ratio, or you have fish which seem to do signficantly better with bi-hourly feedings due to them being picky eaters etc, then maybe the downside is a moot point or greater than feeding less frequently. But this would be situational and should not apply as a general rule.

People love to defend the idea of continuously feeding their fish. This is totally fine. I am only saying that this approach should not be promoted as a best practice, as many folks with smaller tanks or less experience, or a combination of both, struggle with the negative impact from this practice, which really is not necessary in general to maintain healthy fish. I also believe that what you feed is much more important than how often you feed.
 
iani said:
This is basically what I do. Except I seem to have to feed more than my fish actually need to keep my nutrients up. Caveat, I don't actually test my nutrients but I can tell based on how my coral look.
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i also have to feed heavy to keep nutrients up. my phosphates like to play games with me get too low for comfort so i feed heavy with frozen and reef roids
 
Quick question for everyone: do you turn down the flow for feeding? I feel like 75% of the food I add isn’t eaten because it’s whipped away immediately

Flow in my tank is fast all over
 
My fish aren’t super enthusiastic eaters. I once ran an auto feeder to go off 6 times daily, and Id manually feed a few times too, and ever since then they’ve not been super excited to eat. I think they might be spoiled.

I’ve been adding food beyond what they eat just to drive up nutrients. Now i’m wondering if it’s the taste, food shape, flow, something else
 
Alexander1312 said:
There were only two people in this thread who claimed there is such a thing as overfeeding. I was one of them, so here is my response:

By having higher than desirable nutrient levels in the tank which unnecessarily pollutes the water while the animals do not seem to benefit from the additional feeding.

In fact, I significantly cut back on feeding from previous levels and I have not seen the fish losing weight a single bit (some actually continue to gain weight), or changing their behavior. But this is only my observation and I do not rely on this only.

If your water does not pollute due to a high coral to fish (size) ratio, or you have fish which seem to do signficantly better with bi-hourly feedings due to them being picky eaters etc, then maybe the downside is a moot point or greater than feeding less frequently. But this would be situational and should not apply as a general rule.

People love to defend the idea of continuously feeding their fish. This is totally fine. I am only saying that this approach should not be promoted as a best practice, as many folks with smaller tanks or less experience, or a combination of both, struggle with the negative impact from this practice, which really is not necessary in general to maintain healthy fish. I also believe that what you feed is much more important than how often you feed.
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Thanks! I think the animals not benefiting makes sense, but most of the time nutirent levels don't make sense when connected to feeding.
I think very little in the hobby can be called best practice- all systems are bespoke and different.
 
tribbitt said:
Quick question for everyone: do you turn down the flow for feeding? I feel like 75% of the food I add isn’t eaten because it’s whipped away immediately

Flow in my tank is fast all over
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Yes, I do, because of exactly this problem. I tried different ways, strong flow, no return, no flow, but landed on keeping a light flow, return off while feeding frozen food. For pellet food/auto feeder, everything stays on as normal.
 
tribbitt said:
My fish aren’t super enthusiastic eaters. I once ran an auto feeder to go off 6 times daily, and Id manually feed a few times too, and ever since then they’ve not been super excited to eat. I think they might be spoiled.

I’ve been adding food beyond what they eat just to drive up nutrients. Now i’m wondering if it’s the taste, food shape, flow, something else
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They do not seem to like what you are cooking :). But I believe I had similar issues, until I found the right food. Now there is always a frenzy no matter how often I feed.
 
Thales said:
but most of the time nutirent levels don't make sense when connected to feeding.
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Can you eloborate on this? This seems like a novel statement I have not heard before, which is interesting.

Thales said:
I think very little in the hobby can be called best practice- all systems are bespoke and different.
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Yes, I tend to agree. I guess there are some basics over the (recent) years which seem to have turned out to be more broadly applicable or advisable, but the rest comes down to ‘it depends’. Also, I wish we would think of and communicate more about the pros and cons when sharing advice.
 
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