In your experience, have you found it easier to keep scleronephthea or dendronephthea? I have a small (about 3” frag) of dendronephthea that I received about a week ago from LA. Seems to be doing well but it’s too early to tell. Maybe in a couple of months, I’ll know if my regimen is faring well. I also have some scleronephthea and I get a really good feeding response from them. Have had them for about a month maybe a bit more. But it maybe too early to tell with them also. I dose live phyto and L-type rotis to the tank. It’s basically a large Gatorade bottle that gets feed sump water with an aqua lifter and it overflows back into the sump. So it’s kind of like a continuous source. I culture the phyto separately. I add the phyto to the container in the morning and at night. Since it’s a slow continuous drip, both the rotis and phyto is dosed in this manner.
I also spot feed a mixture of foods twice a day to the NPS. I alternate between and sometimes mix up:
Oyster Feast
Reef Roids
Reef Blizzard-S
Reef Snow
Microbacter 7
I was wondering if I should add Reed Mariculture’s shellfish diet. It contains T. pseudonana and T. weisflogii, and also phyto. And maybe source some Paraccocus bacteria from Brine Shrimp Direct. Do you have any experience using these products? I recall a bit back in your thread, you utilized the bacteria but I’m not sure if you still do.
Amazingly, even with the heavy particulate feedings, my nutrients hover around 10-16ppm NO3 and 0.04-0.08ppm PO4. I do not use a skimmer but have a lush ATS and Chaeto Reactor. Along with a large cryptic zone in my sump. I wasn’t doing water changes on my system for a while and nutrients are still maintains a good range. I use the Triton system but I am feeling like with all that going into the system, I should start doing water changes also so I’ll be setting up an AWC in the coming days. Everything looks happy in the tank. It’s mainly softies, NPS, gorgs, sponges, macro algae and a few LPS. Currently, there are 6 seahorses in there that get feed (feeding station) PE Mysis (3 cubes a day- broken down into 2 feedings) for 6 days and then on day 7 is they’re fasting day. It’s a 110g with a 20g sump. I’ll also be transferring 5 chromis, a goby and a fire fish into the tank in the coming weeks, hence my thoughts about employing an AWC (10% weekly). But I was wondering about the diatoms and the bacteria and whether it should be part of the rotation.
Oh and I apologize for the long post!