Success with non-photosynthetics
 

I've done a fair bit of research and brain picking about them, and finally decided to give one a try. My new coral is an Acabaria sp. sea fan, which is claimed to eat zoo and phytoplankton, marine snow and fish waste. I was told that reef roids are a good thing to feed it. Can anyone tell me if this is true or not?

I'm curious to see who has had success in keeping non-photosynthetic corals? Please tell me about your success or lack of. Please tell me about your tank as far as flow, feeding and other relevant info that might help me out.

:biggrin:Danny

I used to keep 4 sea fans, all non photo. that was in my old tank, i was feeding them, the kent phyto, zoomax and chromamax. all with a full dropper of food. they were all encrusting and growing.
I was also doing a water change of 4gallons every night.

Check out some of the non-photosynthetic tanks on the Zeo forums. People are having a lot of success using Zeo and Fauna Marin additives. The trouble is feeding a non-photosynthetic enough that it will thrive without polluting your tank. Most successful non-photosynthetic keepers have dedicated systems. That's something I would REALLY like to do one day.

Think the only real way to get away with it is with a drip 24x7. Convert an old kalkwasser stirrer into a drip feeder basically.

That is hard work !

oh, i just thought of it, there is a great article and pictures of a non-photo reef in the new coral magazine, the tank is INSANE. It has 20-25 colonies of suncorals, detros, fans, whips, everything. The corals and colors are out of this world.

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Does one sea fan really need to be fed that much though? I guess its a good thing my skimmer is oversized. Tony, good idea with the drip thing. I'll have to do some trial and error tests to see what I can come up with. the wheels are already turning.

What about flow though? What are people running for current in their tank?

Danny an oversized skimmer is counter-productive to overfeeding phyto as the skimmer will remove the phyto unless you shut off your skimmer for fairly long periods of time.

Yes. That is because there needs to be a certain concentration in the water column in order for the coral is be able to get enough food out of it. It is very difficult to keep non-photos in a mixed reef. I attempted the same as you awhile back, and target fed the sea fan daily. I managed to pollute the tank real well, and the sea fan still died. :neutral:

Here's one of the nicest non-photo tanks I've ever seen: http://www.zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16186
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/7413/13557221ar6.jpg

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Well, I've brought the coral home with me so I'm going to make the best of it. It appears to open up and eat when I add the Reef Roids to the tank, which I'll take as a good sign.