Why Turn Off Pumps During Feeding?
 

I've been seeing people do this and cant understand why.

anyone know the logical reason behind this?

i leave mine on.. i have a perfect circle going so my entire tank gets fed and the left over keep moving until they a. find the over flow or b. get eaten....

The only time I turn pump off Is when I feed phyto or rotifers for clams and Sps

Though I use to house 12 anthias and I did then also

I leave mine on too. It keeps the food suspended so it doesn't settle out. What doesn't get eaten goes out the overflow.

i just leave everything on full blast. i just turn off the skimmer when feeding clams.

i make my fish work for their food:lol:

I turn off all flow when I feed mysis. I find that alot gets missed in all the ramdom flow I have and I keep no realistc clean up crew to salvage what gets lost. I will only put in small amouts at a time and make sure it gets eaten before I put more in . Just an easy way to control waste... For floating flake I leave everything on and scoop out anything that the skimmer or fish miss.

Leaving the pumps on is fine, feeding the sump is not. I imagine many turn their return pumps off but leave circulating on. Thats what the feed mode on my controller does. I also use a feeding ring, or should say square as mine is.

feeding my sump is great!!! i have 2 clowns and a damsel down there!! plus crabs and snails! lol!

Whats a feeding ring

i dunno how it is for everyone else.

i feed on the opposite side of my overflow. food doesnt even get a chance to travel half way across the tank before it gets eaten.

i've never seen food touch the sand either

For the most part people would agree we design our tanks and water flow to keep things suspended and be as efficient as possible at forcing debris and other crap to the overflow so it can filtered out before settling and breaking down in the display.

So with that said it's clear why one might want to consider turning off or at least reducing the flow during feeding times. If you don't you'll likely waste a good portion of food that will get filtered out and depending on what goes on from there the extra food may not be filtered out properly and break down into nutrients.

In addition some peoples livestock might benefit from not having to chase down food at light speed but this depends on what livestock you keep.

If you feel neither of these are issues with your tank then yeah it wouldn't make much sense to shut off pumps.

I'm a little curious. Just how much food does everybody feed, that they are worried about "leftover" ? I only feed small amounts a day. It's a feeding frenzy everytime I drop in some pellets. Never have any leftovers.
I think keeping my fish in competition for food is more natural, and it also leads to better water quality.

I overfeed. I know I do. To me my copperband looks like he's starving at all times although he eats at every meal. He's very healthy and at a good weight but I'm a mother hen and tend to overnurture all my babies. I'm pretty sure that I won't be satisfied until he looks like he's pregnant. I have leftovers that dissapear into the rock work and I probably should freak out about it but I figure the CUC needs the extra food. I don't turn my pumps off. With the water volume I have the odd 2 or 3 missed mysis shrimps or pellets don't give me an ammonia spike. Everything is growing and happy and with the exception of one mysterious tang death in the last month I haven't had any issues that have come up in my tank.

Having said all of that I have a fairly low bioload as I don't have much for livestock, so overfeeding 6 small fish in a 250 gallon system is not as big of a deal as overfeeding 15 similar sized fish in a 90 gallon set up.

i feed via the return pumps so the food gets blasted every which way. pumps left on at all times

Its a floating ring for putting flake type food in. Mine also attached to the side with a suction cup. The food slowly sinks to the water a little at a time, letting it get eaten as it falls.

My clowns, thats all I have, and I,m sure other fish would, figured out where the food was and were always poking their face up into the ring.



As another mentioned, I have always, {for close to 40yrs}, fed my fish a lot. Its worked well for me. Same as a few other things I do for the fish, which does not follow what many others do, but thats for another thread.

I'm overfeeding on purpose, the equivelant of about 3 cubes of frozen, a cup of liquid/powder foods plus pellets....daily

wow, why?

Trying an experiment lol its not for fish I target feed all my corals daily, some are nps corals.I'm also feeding an ATS and half a dozen types of macro. My nitrates are still dropping from off the chart 6mths ago to my target range of 10-20 which is where I'm at now.without feeding this much my nitrates are dropping , I'm not shooting for a ulns

because everyone knows all the currents stop in the ocean when it is time for the fish to eat :wink:

seriously though I never did, and I over fed like mad.. no problems ever because I had a skimmer that was big enough to quickly remove everything and very high flow to keep it from settling out.

I guess if you have corals you need to hand feed it might make it is bit easier, but I used to feed my brain with out any problems.

Steve

this leads me to my next question..... why do people target feed corals?

auto feed
 

My tank is on auto feed apex looks after all the dry stuff 3 times a day apex shuts it all down for a half an hour everyday why waste food when I manual feed mysis same deal shut it all off but the heaters of course I have backup pumps programmed just in case my main return doesn't start.

Call it coral fertilizer..You could just water your house plants and they would be fine.... but they will do better with fertilizer..

isnt there enough stuff in the water for the corals to pick up and eat?

I target feed mysis and don't want to leave it to chance that they get some if I just toss it in...which would lead to overfeeding the tank and like I said earlier I really don't have any scavengers.

who target feeds corals in the wild?

Zooplankton for one, and before you ask no you don't have anywhere near the quantity in your tank compared to the wild. Next time you have the opportunity go night diving in a reef, turn all the lights off and wave your hands around.

ya ya okay, I get it. If I can improve things by feeding I will..If I feel better for taking vitamins I will, If I get better for taking medicine I will. If you want to run your tank on the "organic" leave it be system then giddy up..You asked, I answered... your right, I'm not wrong....:biggrin:

http://www.smileyvault.com/albums/fo...stirthepot.gif
I vote this smilie be added to the list

too scary. i dont wanna be eaten or stung by something:neutral:

1. You can't get stung in a wetsuit.
2. 'cause people get eaten all the time...
3. *cough* pussy *cough*

if it has a mouth....feed it:P


your corals will benefit from feedings(lps especially), and its even more true for anemones like carpets and lta's:)

my suncorals need to be fed to the individual polyps daily/twice a day unless i was to pollute my tank they wont get enough food from the water coloumn:P

I turn my vortechs down to 10% for half hr during feed mode and not completely off, the food blows around for 1/2 hr and uneaten food hits the sump to be skimmed out or the crabs find it.

I don't turn my pumps off when I feed my tank which is a sps tank. But if I was feeding a lps tank I would turn the pumps off and target feed each coral, I think it would be a waste of food with the pumps on.

Correction;
Your covered parts can't get stung
Diving with my birth mom and her friends when I was just barely a teen made me nervous 'cause they stuck their hands into all kinda dark places

Fair enough

Maybe it had something to do with the movie 'The Deep' having just come out :mrgreen:

I feed my LPS and NPS 4 to 6 cubes frozen. Feed mode for 10 mins. This allows the corals to grab onto the food easier. it allows me to make sure each polyp gets a good amount of food. When the pumps turn onto full again anything that isn't being held by a coral blows into the water column for the fish. This way the coral get most of the food and only about one cube worth goes to the fish. If I didn't turn on feed mode more then half the food enters the water column and a lot goes uneaten.

any logical reason? there are plenty of logical reasons. I stop my pumps so that my anemone have the time to eat the food before the flow blow everything off...I cut the pumps so that I can feed my dendros before the strong flow take the food off of them...I cut the pumps so that my zoanthids, palythoas and ricordeas have time to swollow the food before they get blasted...and finally I cut the pumps so that the little live white worms that I feed my copperband do not get spread everywhere and stuck in every bit of crevasse in my totoka liverock...

To make sure they get enough food, obviously. I target feed my dendros, each little head. I target feed my anemones, and my duncans.

If I don't turn the pump off the ricordeas cannot swallow any food as it get blow off rather fast. Ricordeas take forever to eat and swallow food, and oftent I have to cut the pump for 30 to 40 minutes until they finish eating. They do grow much faster and multiply this way a lot faster when targed feeding them.

Dendros need food as they are not photosynthetic. Thinking they will manage to grab bits of food for each head is nonsense unless you pollute your tank with so much food that it is saturated with bits of food. I don't want to pollute my tank that way.