What's your mixed reef feeding schedule like?

[JohnnyG]

As a little background info, my tank is about 2 years old, parameters are generally as follows
~220 Gal. Actual water volume mixed reef
2x Radions and 2x T5s (run 2 hours a day)
Only use RO/DI w/ Red Sea Coral Pro salt and dose B-Ionic 2 part

I run an algae scrubber that is starting to mature and Carbon. I just dropped GFO as I figured it might be stripping too much out of the water. Also run a protein skimmer pretty dark just to help and keep the water oxygenated.

Temp - Always 79 F +/- 1
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - <2
SG - 1.025
Phosphate - undetectable
Mg - Recently raised from 1360 to 1420
Alk - 9.5 dKH
Ca - 400

Right now I feed the following: About a half sheet of Nori for 4 tangs per day, 2 frozen cubes of an assortment of food types for the rest of my fish, and I broadcast feed zooplankton every other day, usually target feeding about once a week.

I've had phenomenal SPS growth as of recently, zoanthids, leathers, and most LPS doing great... but for some reason, I can't seem to keep euphyllia anymore to save my life, which is a shame because I really like the movement they add. I've also tried varying placement of flow, lighting, and a combination of the both, but my euphyllia just seem to die off slowly. I tried spot feeding an assortment of food to no avail. I'm wondering if my water is too clean.

Any advice would be great. I'm not new to the hobby. I perform proper husbandry and maintenance, and I have successfully kept euphyllia before I attempted a mixed reef.

How did you find a happy medium with your feeding schedule? Also, please share your feeding schedule for your mixed reef.

Thanks!

 

[Liquid360]

Make sure you have a strong pod population and I add live brine twice/week. I add live phyto twice a week along with a food specifically for pods. In my eyes, microfauna is key.

 

[JohnnyG]

Good call! I have a mandarin that's fat and happy, but I don't often see a huge pod population when the lights are out. Any particular place you buy your pods from to restock?

 

[AcroNem]

I feed all my systems nightly.
I feed phytoplankton, enough to make the water a bit green, mixed with any of the following.
Rotifers, oyster eggs, brine shrimp nauplii, or Arctic copepods. I rotate what I mix with the phyto every night or every other night, just to keep it varied. I have few fish so I can get away with feeding corals heavily, they'll thank you for it and so will your microfauna populations, which will also feed your corals and other inhabitants.

 

[Liquid360]

I've bought them from all over the place. I even keep a 10g pod farm tank which I add to every six months. My favorite is AlgaeBarn. I buy 24,000 pods, x2 bags of 12k. I feed one to display/sump and one into pod farm. I buy the ultra concentrated roti-food from aquaculturenurseryfarms.com

 

[JohnnyG]

Right on. I have used AlgaeBarn before and was really impressed. Your logic makes total sense though. I guess I just always had this narrowed perception that pods were meant exclusively for mandarins. I'm sure euphyllia catch them all day with a good population.

 

[AcroNem]

Pretty much everything will eat them, either the adults or the nauplii that are in the water column. So having a thriving microfauna population feeds everything else. And it all starts with phytoplankton

 

[Liquid360]

Yeah all corals eat them. It always seems everyone focuses on the macro, but I believe the micro is the key to healthy coral. I've just begun farming phyto as well after buying a kit from Aquaculture. Phyto feeds the pods/coral and pods feed everything else [emoji4] the circle of life