Rethinking how I feed nori ..
 

So I feed nori to my fish by wrapping a piece around a piece of PVC hung in the tank by fishing line and then using an elastic to hold the nori on. Pretty standard fare, I think most people do it this way or a variant thereof.

What's never sat well with me is how often I have to replace elastics - at least once per week. Sometimes I find them, most times I don't. Most of the times they'd find their way into the Seio in the back (why always the Seio and never one of the others, I don't know, more suction maybe??), or one of the urchins would find them and decorate themselves with them (and then I could pick them off the urchin).

Today I see my sailfin tang has a little something hanging out his poop shoot - yep, a totally formed elastic. He's tame enough that he let me get my hand up to him and pull it out (ewww, never speak of this again) but now I'm a little nervous ... I've had him for 9 years, I can't imagine how I'd be if I lost him and to something like he was bunged up with elastics ... :neutral:

Any thoughts on how else to hold the nori down? I know some people use gutter guard but aren't you faced with the same problem, how do you keep it down on the feeding tube? Wonder if I could make something using nylon screws as hooks or something..

A "Sailfin Rubber Fish"

I here they are quite rare.

Glad that he is ok. I myself use a clip with suction on glass, but I can say it does leave slight scratches over time. I have to be careful putting it on the glass and sliding it off.

I am thinking of tieing the clip to fishing line and then hanging it of the light fixture. You then have the clip action and enough weight to keep it hanging in the water.

my puffer ...same thing i lose them sometimes and one day here he is swimming around with a loop hanging out his but i reach in as friendly as he was he could sit right in my hand i pulled the elastic and away he swam:) still had his puffer smile:) i try to keep better track of them now and put them on tight :)

I've seen nori clips with magnet attachments on them but I can't remember where. I'll try Googling it in a bit.
Your Sailfin reminds me of a dog we used to have. Every Christmas the silly thing would be walking around with tinsel hanging from its butt. Of course I had to be the one to rescue the tinsel. :redface:

"Veggie Mag" by Two Little Fishies

I like that, please find the link.... No scratchy of the glassy with that.

Try thicker elastics? I use 1/4" wide elastics and never had an issue? they do break but never eaten

Marine Depot and Big Al's sells them among others.

My elastics seem to last about a month. I have never lost one to the tank as I usually break them when wrapping them around the feeder. I just recycle the ones i get from the fish store.

have seen them at big als as well was thinking about getting one:)

the only problem i see with the clip is my elastic holds the nori tightly around the pvc so my tang has to pick at it if its just a clip will they pull it right off in large pieces ??:):)

I use the thicker elastics as well- only had 1 break on me in a months time and as stated, they are too big for the fish to eat.

I usually just hand feed them (Nori goes fasssstt in my tank) but If I'm busy I use one of those magnetic frag plugs to hold it in place. Works like a charm.

I usually recycle the ones from LFS purchases too. I've used the larger ones sometimes but I'm not too keen on those since there's always a little bit under the elastic that doesn't get eaten (not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things I guess).

Also not really been a huge fan of clips because it's too messy. I used to feed that way; but ever since switching to rolled up nori over a pipe I've always thought this was a win because 1) it lasts 30 seconds longer 2) the fish get to eat all of it or close to all of it, as opposed to bits and pieces that escape and so on..

I was actually also kind of entertaining the notion of just not feeding nori anymore. I always used nori as a means to start a fish like a tang onto prepared foods but then keep up with it since they like it so much. But it would be pretty easy to compensate for the removed nori by feeding say more spirulina or gracillaria or even caulerpa which is easy enough to cultivate...

Maybe I'll just switch to thicker elastics for now until I have a bigger brain wave of an idea. I'm still tossing the idea around in my head of using some kind of hook based system and gutter guard .... hmmmmmm. We'll see, most of my DIY ideas usually don't end up going anywhere.

Yeah, same, that's part of the problem. They're eating it so frantically they're not stopping to see if that's all they're eating. :neutral:

I couldn't imagine not feeding my little piggies Nori, They're now going through 2 sheets a day as well as all the caulerpa, dictyota, valonia ect that they can reach

Yeah me too, but I'm just trying to think outside the box here. It wouldn't be too difficult to compensate with extra feedings of say pellets on an auto feeder or something along these lines.

The nori I feed is gone so quickly it hardly counts as a feeding anymore anyhow. Adding more or larger nori has a negative impact on the tank. I just wonder how much benefit there is in my case versus the risk and the impact on the nutrient cycle.

Just wondering out loud .. for the moment I'm not stopping nori, no worries there.

i just changed how i do my nori
i got ****ed at the magnet clip that scratched my glass. its a nori clip with a magnet on it.

so here is what i did

I have a mesh screen with about 2 inches that is un covered where the returns go in. i took a piece of rope used for tieing up meat for cooking and tied it to my nori clip.

i tied the rope to the leg of my light fixture and then i hung the nori clip over the return line so it just hangs right in the middle of the tank about 6 inches away from the glass and the rope is not long enough to get flung up into the glass (basically didnt want to touch the glass)

this was all good until i noticed i was a noob and the nori clip floats (doh!) so i took a very small pebble of live rock and clipped it on the nori clip until it sank. once i knew how much live rock i needed which was very very small, i took some of that putty stuff you use to attach frags and molded it around the rock inbetween the clip area so the rock was not exposed at all just in case it hit the glass.

now it takes me all of 4 seconds to attach nori and the fish like it because its in open space and it seems alive since it moves, lol. you should see my lawnmower blenny swing from it.

anyways let me know if you want a pic, i can take one tomorrow when i throw some nori in.

i have a nothing touches my glass rule now. this stupid nori clip with the magnet and my small frag rack have scartched two ends of the glass and ****ed me off.

So you just have the nori clipped loose though and not rolled over anything?

Your description of the LMB though is begging for a picture :lol: So yeah, even if he's not doing the Tarzan please do post the picture when you get a chance. :)

what do you mean rolled over anything?

btw if i had fishing line i would use that instead of the rope because then it would look my LMB is surfing a nori clip instead of Tarzaning, lol

I use fishing line to hold a 4" piece of 1/2" PVC. I roll the nori over the clip so that the tangs have to graze the nori instead of mow the nori. I used a clip for a few years until I noticed a huge difference in how fat my tangs were at the time compared to the tangs of those who fed them by rolling the nori over a pipe instead. Now people tell ME I have fat tangs and I'm all "Thanks! It's the rolled up nori that's the secret."

The problem is holding it down to the PVC, I criss cross an elastic over top of the nori and that works except that the elastics only last a few days for me. If I'm lucky, it breaks when I put it on and I just replace it. But otherwise it ends up in the tank or apparently in a tang.

Hmmm I wonder if O-rings would work better. Two of them, one on each edge and just roll it onto the nori. Might have to give that a whirl..

Tony what about the easyblade attachment? instead of a blade just feed some nori into it?

Thats what I was thinking, O-rings or Reusable Zip ties.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#zip-ties/=9n9580

This style one is what I was thinking of.

http://images1.mcmaster.com/Contents...g?ver=17738846

That's an awesome idea!! Gonna have to go pick up some of those! Thanks!

Brett - not bad either except I see that working better for just having the nori loose - I feel very strongly that the nori has to be rolled over the PVC pipe (think of a sushi roll but instead of rice or whatever inside, it's a PVC pipe). The tangs have to earn their nori by scraping it off the PVC. What happens this way is that no one fish can make off like a bandit with the day's allotment of nori so everyone who wants some, gets some (how very socialist of me - I blame my Swedish ancestry), there is also far less mess produced and the amount of nori actually "harvested" by the fish is much larger. And, the last little bits get picked up by the urchins and/or abalone - rolling it is really a win in my opinion..

I use a regular nori clip attached to an acrylic bracket that I fashioned with a heat gun. The bracket hangs on the rim of the tank fairly close to my autofeeder. I tried the elastic scenario on a piece of live rock and didn't really like the way that worked. I also read about the pvc method but that seemed like too much hassle as well with the elastic issues as you've experienced. Inevitably I didn't do a good job of wrapping the elastic and tang man would tear it right off it's mooring. The clip has its cons, but at least it secures the nori fairly well. I soak the nori just a little and fold it in half before putting it in the clip with just a little protruding. This means every so often I need to pull the clip out and expose a little more nori, but with the bracket set up that's fairly easy and very little gets wasted that way.

I experimented with chopping up dry nori and putting it in the auto feeder with the flakes & pellets, but that didn't work all that well. Seems the bits of nori floating around with the flakes somehow didn't spark the interest with the two fish that regularly take nori. My yellow tang & singapore angel are just too accustomed to taking it from the clip now and mostly ignored the nori that floated with the flake food. Might still do this if I'm away for a few days. The tang will go after the last remnant of nori from the clip when I release that into the water, but usually there aren't a bunch of flakes floating around to distract him when I do this.

Here's the bracket with clips. I only use a single clip since I don't have that many veggie eaters in my system. All you need is a heat gun or torch, scrap acrylic and a nylon screw. I tapped the acrylic so the screw threads right in. The screw head holds the clip quite loosely so it dangles to and fro, like real algae in the ocean. The tang & angel seem to enjoy making it bounce when they tear away at it.

http://public.blu.livefilestore.com/...31c.JPG?psid=1

here are some crappy IPhone shots
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2361330/Aqua...Clip/Nori1.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2361330/Aqua...Clip/Nori2.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2361330/Aqua...Clip/Nori3.jpg

I like that. So you don't find that there is a lot of messy nori bits floating off into the water column that way? That was one of the things that pushed me to roll it over a pipe in the first place. But I just lost yet another elastic last night.. the tangs must really be picking at them harshly, that one only lasted about 2 days. No idea where this one ended up, couldn't see it anywhere.

We use hair elastics. The ones with no metal of course. They're thin enough not to be a pain in the butt with nori getting left over, but don't break (easily, at least) and are never touched if they do fall.

i fold the nori several times and clip it right in the middle so they cant take big junks. There isnt much nori floating around in the water so its not biggie to me. One thing i hate about it is when they poop. Then there is a bunch of nori all over the place for a bit. Ive been trying to feed before i go to work so then i dont have to deal with the poop nori because the filters pick it up.

here is a glimpse of my LMB tarzaning, hes a bit shy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMzwzClbTgE

Haha, those guys are hilarious. I had one that would put on a huge show of bravado anytime I cleaned the glass on the outside with a white cloth - he HATED that white cloth! He would chase it away the whole time.

Well I must say I'm sort of intrigued of just rolling it like a cigarette or something like that and letting them go berserk at the "stick" of nori. I'll have to try it and see how it goes. Used to be that it was too messy for my liking but maybe things will be different now.

so do people just clip a full sheet on without folding? is that why people dont like the clip?
i did that the first day and said, wtf thats bs, so i started folding because i thought thats what you were suppose to do.

when i put just a sheet in without folding there is bunch of nori floating around

I had been folding. The issue was in the way the tang would eat the nori. If he grabbed the end there was no problem. If he grabbed at any part in the middle, the end part would get torn off and float away. By wrapping around a pipe, the only part that can be eaten is at the outside edge no matter what.

A unfolded sheet was even worse. I'd end up with a square of nori flying around in the current and the fish was too scared of the flying nori to even chase after it. Happy times.

I use one of those suction cup clips, I roll it nice and tight and then fold it once. Seems to work OK. My fish don't attach the Nori though so I don't have them going at it and ripping it to shreds.

I use one of the suction cup clips as well but I removed the suction cup and tied a piece of clear fishing line to it. This way it sinks to the bottom with the nori pointing straight up and waving in the current. The line is to retrieve it without sticking my hands in the water.

I do the same as intarsiabox. The only problem I've ever had when hanging this Ocean Nutrition clip was one time when my eel decided it wanted to eat the nori and actually broke some 4 lbs test fishing line... I still dont understand how.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1832.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1829.jpg

It's funny I finally got my Kole to eat Nori today (what the hell is WRONG with that tang he loves pellets lol) and the way that finally succeeded was to tear it into little bit and toss them in. Nobody else wants it so I know he'll always get his fill.

added some nori to the tank for the first time yesterday....my Kole tang had little interest in it at first...and even after he found it didn't attack it....rather just nibbled on it all day....weird

I use a suction cup clip with the suction cup removed, and zap strapped on a small bracket that hangs on the side of the tank. Works great for me.

And just rolled inside in the clip Brad? Or loose? Or folded once or twice?

I tried cigarette-rolling the nori the other day. It sort of worked out OK I guess but the stuff is dry so it cracks a little and kind of broke up anyhow. So I reverted back to sushi-rolling it over the pipe for now using zap straps but the non-reusable kind so it's a huge pain to wiggle them over the nori. This won't last long before I lose patience with this process.