What do you know about feeding?

[MikeP]

It makes no sense to us but c'mon the man is a doctor of invertebrate zoology! Guess I better start blanching those mysis of any vitamins and feeding 6x a day instead of 2. Do you have the original article Shimek posted this I'd be interested to read it.

[newtosa]

I was surprised to read that too. I guess I'll have to dust off the old Daily Double automatic flake feeder (remember those) and monkey with the gears to get my once-every-2-hours rotation ;)

Hey, it might put Tetra back in the SW fish food business....

[Hammer]

Simply put, most marine animals we are going to have, have digestive tracts that food goes through very quickly. They do not have a long tract that takes out ALL the nutrients.
Some fish will only keep food in them for MINUTES before getting rid of the rest as waste.

[Yves Nobleza]

It kinda makes sense in the wild they eat whenever and whatever they want...there is always a constant supply of food. So I guess that is targeted at trying replicate nature. I just hope that doesn't start a wave of overfeeding... I'd rather stick to my once a day feeding and keep my good water quality.

[MikeP]

I finally read the article. I see where he is coming from but am still for feeding a variety of foods, some enhanced with vitamins. The problem I would have with this is that other than flake/pellet foods most frozen foods do not lend themselves to automatic feeders.

I try to make sure my pair of Bangaii's eats at least twice a day and I feed my niger trigger well for obvious reasons (keep him out of mischeif). LTA gets spot fed almost daily and Trachyphyllia brain, Pearl, Torch and Frogspawn all get small spot feedings 3-4 times a week.

[Hammer]

Well, flake food usually has a high amount of phosphates.
The biggest key is to only feed very small amounts, but in a way where most if not all is eaten. But feed many times a day. Also, a great thing about automatic feeders is that the fish will quickly learn the exact times it is going to drop food, and where at. And being this in tune with the feeding cycle really allows for more of the food to be consumed.

And given the short digestive time, there will still be plenty of 'left overs' for the rest of the critters in our tanks.

[z28pwr]

I guess they want you to do this because if you feed High Protein food it will go through their digestive system fast and will not digest all the protein leaving alot of nutritional items unprocessed which other not so good things can feed off.

[Hammer]

This isn't a bad thing to have the extra nutrients going to other parts of the system. In fact, it is a vital part of our very limited little biosphere. Somethings were designed to take in nutrients post-fish-processing.

The key is to not provide so much that the normal tank levels cannot be maintained, and it is just broke down my bacteria in the nitrogen cycle rather then being directly used in the food chain and only the very last level of the food chain being left for bacteria to break down.

[Tim Marvin]

This article makes perfect sense. They will get a little bit of nutrition from each piece of food. There is the danger of over feeding and poluting the tank though. A very small quantity of food a few times a day would probably be best unless you wanted to use some type of dosing pump. Also don't forget that herbivoirs will get almost nothing out of meaty foods and vice-versa. They digestive tract is set up to process certain types of foods in most animals. This is why cows can live off grass and we would shrivel up and die. Yet if you fed a cow it's friend it would just go right throuhg without being processed by the intestinal tract. Hypothetically speaking. It is a very complex process and if you are more interested in the processes a good college class in animal biology should satisfy your interest.