Feeding Stations

[Paul B]

All fish in the sea know how to find their food and in a tank it is even easier for them. The problem is that in the sea Mother Nature supplies food all day, every day. We as humans have other lives and usually don't want to feed our fish continousely. At least I don't. Also some fish are just designed to eat a tiny bit all day because that is just the way their digestive systems were designed. Fish like pipefish and seahorses don't even have a real stomach, just a short tube that acts like a stomach and intestine. These types of fish can not store food as other fish can. Other fish with similar digestive systems are mandarins and any other fish that normally lives on tiny food such as pods. These fish can not even eat a large meal if it were offered to them which is also the reason for their tiny mouths.
For this reason I am a big advocate of feeding stations.
My tank is old and loaded with pods so I really don't have to do this but sometimes a certain fish needs a little help even if the tank is full of pods.
I recently aquired a baby female that is very skinny. I am hoping she matures to mate with my large male.
I hatch and feed live baby brine shrimp to my tank every day and most of the fish eat them, even the larger gobies but this food disappears in a few minutes. Some of it gets skimmed off or caught in powerheads and the rest migrate to the surface because baby brine shrimp are attracted to light.
Most fish that would eat pods, live on the bottom so that food is lost to them.
This feeding station is designed for baby brine shrimp. It is just a plactic container with a mesh over it that barely passes baby brine.
It also has a tube running to the surface so I can fill it with shrimp.
I fill it in the morning and fish just hang around it all day sucking out shrimp.
Many shrimp also escape to be caught by the corals.
About 15 years ago I designed and patented this type of feeding station for adult brine shrimp.
JoM Article: A New Feeding Strategy for Hippocampus sp., and other fishes, by Paul Baldassano (I do not sell these)
I have also used a different type of feeding station to feed moorish Idols.

 

[TJL]

That is very very cool Paul, may have to fab one up myself to use til my new system matures a bit. From one Old Salt to another thanks man for all your imput/support here on Reef Frontiers and the hobby in general.

Cheers, Todd

 

[Paul B]

Thanks Tod,
I built the thing in a few minutes.

 

[Peppie]

Great info Paul.
Thanks. You are full of ideas that help us newbees

 

[Paul B]

I love this stuff. I modified it a little by adding a better funnel on the top so I can just pour in the baby brine and I added a tiny hole at the bend at the bottom of the acrylic so the air comes out of the tube before it goes in the feeder container.
I also sealed a couple of lead weights in it just for the heck of it.

 

[seattlereef]

That's pretty cool. So do you hatch the brine shrimp remotely?

 

[Paul B]

Yes, I hatch them in here. This also seperates the shells.
I have been hatching and feeding these for decades.

 

[Paul B]

I built the thing mainly for this young skinny female mandarin. Up unitl now she has been afraid to go on top of it and would just suck up the shrimp around the edges but now she hangs out on top of it and sucks out dozens of shrimp. I need her to grow a little so she can mate.

 

[Paul B]

I took a short video of the thing working.

 

[Paul B]

It's been a little over a month since I installed this thing and I love it. My tank has 3 bluestrip pipefish, and two mandarins along with some small clown gobies and shrimp. They all hang around this thing for a few hours that it has shrimp in it. In this tank I really don't have to supliment their diet because there are plenty of pods but I like everything to spawn and the only way fish will spawn is by eating more food then they normally can and food with a high oil content such as new born brine shrimp are even better than pods.
Two of the pipefish are to young to spawn but I feel that in a couple of weeks they will be ready. Also my female mandarin is to young so this will fatten her up.
My copperband is a regular visitor here although he gets live worms every day.
It is just another thing for me to get facinated about.

 

[Paul B]

That skinny little female mandarin at the beginning of this thread is now all filled out and bordering on a little chubby. I am hopeful that soon she will grow enough to mate with the large male who so far ignores her. I don't know why, she is cute.

 

[estanoche]

great news Paul!! Have the pipe's begun spawning yet too???

 

[Paul B]

No, the new ones are too young

 

[Paul B]

I am happy to say that in the 5 or 6 weeks since I installed this baby brine shrimp feeding station my skinny little female mandarin fattened up nicely and is now bordering on plump.
The first picture is when I got her, you can see her sides pinched in, especially under her dorsal fin and she resembled Twiggy.
The second picture is today.

 

[josh88]

I'm new to the reef aquarim world, as I just started My nano. And dwarf tank. Not stalked yet. But I'm wondering about how you fabricated this awesome feeding device, and would love to know more about it. And the process in building it

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[Paul B]

There are pictures of it on this thread, it is just a container with a mesh over it and a tube going to the surface. On the tube, over the surface is a small funnel. The mesh size has holes in it the same size as baby brine shrimp so the shrimp can just about get through but you want most of them to stay in there so the fish can suck them out

 

[josh88]

Would this awesome feeder work for dwarf seahorses, or should I stick to copeopods and amphipods

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[user 2204]

Very cool idea Paul. Love the simple design of the feeding station.

Yes Josh, I do believe this would be an awesome feeding station for seahorses. If you look at the link Paul referenced it shows his initial design was for a seahorse feeder station.

Cheers,
Alex

 

[josh88]

I saw the link. But will dwarf seahorses be able to handle bbs. Or could I mod it for amphipods

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[Paul B]

Dwarf seahorses can and do live on baby brine shrimp. It should work well for them but I would make an upright model like my seahorse feeder only with smaller mesh.