opinions on overfeeding?

[theJ]

cleaning crew aside, is it possible to target feed different types of LPS too much? I am not as concerned about too much food rotting in the tank really, whatever the livestock/cleaning crew doesn't get settles in the sump which is vacuumed weekly during the 20% water change.

The troubles I have been having with my brain recently has me target feeding daily, but I started target feeding twice, once around 5pm (feeder tentacles come out when it smells formula 1/mysis), and once around 11pm (tentacles are already out by themselves).

He eats like a fricking pig, eating at least a half cube of formula1 and a half cube of chopped up mysis to himself, can he eat too much and make himself sick?

What about other LPS? Would this effect zooxzanthele populations because less energy is needed from photosynthesis?

 

[MAGDRL Mom]

It is my understanding that they wont over eat and what I got from Calfo is that we often starve our corals and not realize it. He told our group ok to feed heavily and do more frequent/bigger water changes. Keep an eye on your water parameters. If the brain is eating feed it! but you may need to do bigger/more frequent water changes. You can also use a filter sock, but change it daily. (aside from what they filter, I also feed my brains and plates pieces of silverside to each mouth. My sun polyps have 20+ new polyps, everything is thriving.

I target feed everything I can, I do big water changes every week, and have just recently added ozone. I am home during the day and am able to feed frequently too. The result is growth growth growth! (and I hope happy corals)

 

[returnofsid]

J, As long as your water parameters are staying stable and not becoming polluted, I don't think you could overfeed LPS. To be safe, I might suggest more frequent or larger WCs and skimming wetter than normal. Other than that, go for it!! The faster they grow, the sooner we can trade some frags!!!

 

[theJ]

thanks magdrl_mom and mike! mike, so I do about 20% on 70g total volume, every weekend currently. my parameters are stabilizing ever since the extremely low alk incident, as far as I can tell with my inaccurate test kits :/ They do measure as they did before, which Kevin double checked for me (sg/sal, ca, alk, ph) and all came up great according to his tests (cept for alk).

with that in mind, I am feeding 2x a day now, everything measures great with my current practices, I think I am doing ok on WC and skimmate. Still think I should step it up a notch? Oh I'm running carbon (chemi-pure) now every few days also.

geez a month ago I was feeding every 2-3 days :/

 

[MAGDRL Mom]

I feed my brains silversides or krill 2-3 times a week in addition to target feeding them during regular feeding. I also make sure each mouth gets food. If they dont want it they dont take it and I will pull it from the tank.

 

[sihaya]

Personally, I don't think LPS should be fed such large chunks of food. I know they're capable of taking in huge pieces, but I think it's better for them to be given smaller chunks. I try not to ever feed my corals any chunk bigger than about half the size of a pea.

 

[Anthony Calfo]

indeed... even the largest LPS eat some of the smallest plannkton on the reef. Large chunks of anything rarely make it past the eyballs on the reef. Feed your corals ultrafine matter to be safe.