Feeding a pico

[Skydvr]

So what is everybody using to feed their smaller tanks?


I have no fish, just a blue legged hermit, and some dwarf cerith snails.
For corals I have zoas, an acan, a small bird's nest, and a couple of acros.

I have been using Acrylic Tank Manufacturing Frozen 2.0 which I like because it is not solid, so I can choose exactly how much to use. But the acans only seem to respond to the larger foods like mysis. I'll defrost a cube, but it only lasts a few days and I end up tossing 2/3 of it even after feeding it to my fresh water fish and shrimp. Keeping unused portions in the freezer causes severe freezer burn.

I'd love to hear what others are doing.

 

[Big Larr]

I used to cut the frozen cubes into quarters then only thaw 1/4 of each at a time

 

[brandon429]

the baddest way to feed a pico is to grossly overfeed it with high quality frozen foods and then change out all the water an hour later, reduce feedings down to weekly and in the end its better for the corals and the entire system, sans fish of course.

 

[Skydvr]

I tried the cutting thing with the cubes, but the remaining portion gets freezer burn pretty bad. I rent and have a fridge that was manufactured in '88, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the defrost cycle. I don't use ice often, but when I try to, the icecubes are usually about an 1/8" thick because the rest has evaporated away during defrost cycles. Even with a few waterbottles to maintain some extra thermal mass. I should be getting a new fridge soon, so that might help out.

Brandon, grossly over feeding is no better than throwing most of it away. Anyway, with my current coral load, there isn't much that eats the larger foods. I'd rather spot feed the one coral that eats the larger foods several times a week, broadcast feed the rest a couple times a week, and do my weekly 100% water changes.

I have a sump on my little pico with a refugium. I'm working on getting critters to eat everything that settles out in the sump. I also started making filter socks so that I can clean filter out all the debris when I blast the rocks and sand before water changes, which should help with long term stability and nutrients.

Right now I am working on getting everything back to being stable as I slacked on water changes for most of this past semester, which led to some algae issues that out competed most of my corals. My coral count is down right now, but I want to make sure that I can get what remains back to health and that I can stay on top of the maintenance once the semester start back up before I start adding corals again. Although the $5 and $10 frags can be hard to resist.

 

[Big Larr]

Try cutting a bunch of the cubes then keep them in a sealed empty water bottle or something and just open and take one piece out when needed then reseal

 

[rosieosieee]

I feed rods frozen to the LPS that likes bigger food.

coral freenzy for the filters.

phytofeast everyday for the pods and micro guys.

mysis/rods to my serpent star.

 

[rosieosieee]

because of my high feeding I do water changes 2x a week.

but I do agree with the above statement, feed heavily before a water change and keep it at that if you can.