Reef nutrition

Jeff's 75G conversion from FOLR to reef

Putting the rocks with snails into the sump will do nothing to kill them. They will find their way to your display.
Cheers! Mark
 
I had vermetid snails in my first tank that covered everything, then when I got the next tank I started out with new rock and still got them but they never got out of control. At most I killed about a dozen one time.
 
Unfortunately, if you are buying frags, you will eventually end up with vermetid snails. I dip all my incoming corals, and I still ended up with them. Very manageable, they have almost all died off now. I see maybe a few here and there and I just crush them when I do. My wrasses follow the tongs around when they see them, they know what is coming! Snacks!
 
I’d skip on the Purple-up; I’m holding some small rocks covered in coralline algae; I think I can spare a piece; nice way to “seed” the coralline for the new rocks.

When I started in the hobby, I tried the miracle cures to have a tank purple. Tanks that I saw over time had a thing in common; all of them dosed calcium, either two part or calcium reactors but somehow I could not any purple coralline untill I realized I had overlooked another important thing, Magnesium
As I did my reading here and there, finally started seeing tiny spots on the glass.
Calcium, Alkalinity and Magnesium; when the three are dialed in, any Calcium demanding living thing will grow and thrive.
 
For seeding, just take a rock with good encrustation and gently brush it all over in front of a powerhead blowing onto the rocks you want to seed. Repeat this every now and again over a few weeks and you should gets lots of little coralline colonies start on your new rock. Also, corralline starts easier under dim blue light (fluorescent actinic blue is perfect), I suspect this is because the corraline does not have to compete as much with green algae and diatoms under these conditions.


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I don’t think killing the vermatids solves any problems. They are there because there is a lot of food in the water column for them to catch. You can switch to pellets if there is a messy food dissolving in the water column, reduce the fish load, get some competition (sponges, corals, filter feeders...) but there is clearly a niche for them so until you make life harder for vermatid snails they will only come back.
 
Seeding new rocks begins
 

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Jeff Rehling said:
Probably the food...how many times should i feed each day? I've been using Thera A+A in the morning, and frozen shrimp in the evening
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So the longer I am in this hobby, the more I have realized how important proper particle size is for feeding what you want to grow and what you want to starve. Frozen foods in general offer a myriad of particle sizes; the "juice" from frozen foods is perfect for algae, diatoms, dinoflagellates and vermetid snails. I now only use frozen foods that offer a single particle size, such as PE Mysis and Mysis Shrimp and I thaw the food in RO/DI water, then strain it in a brine shrimp net before feeding. I also feed smaller amounts more frequently and during each feeding I only add to the tank what the fish can grab in a few seconds -- I don't want anything floating around to settle on the bottom or get captured by the few vermetid snails that I do have. I am also experimenting with running my tanks just a bit cooler; I was targeting 79-80 before and now I am running 78 +/- 0.5. I've switched from a glass heater to a titanium heater with a calibrated controller. So far, this is proving to be excellent pest control.
 
Yes, that's correct, only the big pieces go in the tank. I feed only about 1/3 of a cube at one time. I keep the partial cubes in a daily pillbox in the freezer.
 
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Been there, done that - everything will struggle but vermetids... At some point I fed my tank once in three days - nothing survived but vermetids and cyano.


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@Eugene I fatten my fish up on the weekends, feeding 3-4x a day. First feedback of the day is Nori. I make tiny cuts in the edge a sheet, then cross-cut tiny bits into the tank. Everyone has been trained to eat their veggies and my fish develop amazing color eating nori daily. Next feeding is thawed, strained mysis shrimp, then PE mysis later (closest thing I can find to Cyclopeeze). I wrap up the day with either Formula One pellets or Formula 2 Flakes. I target feed my SPS colonies with Reef Roids once a week. I target feed my anemones with Silversides every week or two. Weekdays I do whatever feedings I happen to be home for, usually just the morning. All my fish have a fat bullet shape, so I think they are getting plenty to eat.


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OnTheReef said:
@Eugene I fatten my fish up on the weekends, feeding 3-4x a day. First feedback of the day is Nori. I make tiny cuts in the edge a sheet, then cross-cut tiny bits into the tank. Everyone has been trained to eat their veggies and my fish develop amazing color eating nori daily. Next feeding is thawed, strained mysis shrimp, then PE mysis later (closest thing I can find to Cyclopeeze). I wrap up the day with either Formula One pellets or Formula 2 Flakes. I target feed my SPS colonies with Reef Roids once a week. I target feed my anemones with Silversides every week or two. Weekdays I do whatever feedings I happen to be home for, usually just the morning. All my fish have a fat bullet shape, so I think they are getting plenty to eat.


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Click to expand...
Man that’s a lot of work. I’ll throw in some lrs in the morning but that’s it. When I leave town the auto feeder comes on only one time per day too. I think mine look pretty healthy too. Maybe not fat but healthy.
 
Never actually strained out anything. Need the nutrients. :)

AFS drops pellets in at 10 am on the weekday. Then the 5-6 cubes of frozen food medley gets fed through the rest of the day.

AFS drops pellets in 6x daily during the weekend when I'm not there to feed.
 
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