Feeding the tank

[Paul B]

I purposely didn't call this "feeding the fish" or "feeding the corals"
because we all know we have to feed those.
I use an automatic feeder to feed the "tank" itself.
Much of the livestock in a well established tank is not fish or corals. There are all sorts of things living in there that came by accident that we should strive to cultivate. I have always felt that most tanks are much too sterile. I know a lot of people like that look but IMO it is not healthy. I also know about nitrate but that is a different thing for a different thread.
In "my" tank at least there are hundreds or maybe thousands of brittlestars, tube worms, amphipods, copepods, spaghetti worms, bristle worms etc. I like these creatures as much or more than the animals I paid for. A healthy population of "free" organisms provide food and filtration for a tank with the added benefit of making it much more natural.
When I feed my tank, I see numerous arms poking out of every crevace. Tiny snails that I can hardly see start slinking around and the spaghetti worms
come to life. Of course the larger hermit crabs have excellent odor receptors and head straight for the food.
In my automatic feeder I put some flakes and pellets. Of course the fish eat some of it, but the rest manages to make it to all the crevaces to feed these other, (more interesting in my opinion) animals.
If they were larger and we could see them better, they are many times more interesting than fish. Much of this stuff is right out of science fiction.
If it were not for these organisms I would not be able to keep tiny clown gobies, blue stripe pipefish and mandarins.
They grow naturally in the sea and I feel theuy should populate our tanks.
They, of course have to be added from somewhere and a portion of them come on good quality live rock but they must be fed.
Just my opinion of course. How do you feel about this?

 

[Imbarrie]

Completely agree about that.

I spend a lot of time looking at my rocks and sand for the health of the tank at this level. Mostly a couple hours after lights out with a red lens flashlight.

 

[Dre]

Some pics would be well appreciated by all Paul...

 

[reefs4life]

I agree with you as well Paul 100%

I look really closely to my rocks on a daily basis to see what new little creature I can find. It's way more interesting than looking at what I know I have. I'm not trying to put down everything else that's in my tank and that I bought, because that is beautiful as well but it's just nice to see a surprise in my tank. When I feed my tank there are billions of tube worms that come out stick their tentacles out and little suck the food on the sand down into it. They're not feather dusters, although I have a big area of rock being taken over by hundreds of them, but they're tube worms with I think just 2 white tentacles/arms. And another thing I don't do is, I don't clean the algae on the sides of my tank because I know I have a bunch of pods that run around there and I can't see the tank from the sides anyways so might as well let them live and thrive there (do the same on my fuge tank but I leave all sides the way they are, maybe once a month cleaning there). I definitely think it's true that a tank shouldn't look too clean because that's just not how the ocean is and if we're trying to replicate a natural environment that it should have as many natural components as it can, even the ones that people may not like so much.

 

[Paul B]

I took this in Bora Bora, If you look close you can see all the life.... OK maybe not but you can barely make out a moorish Idol on the bottom center.
If you dive at nicht on a healthy reef you will see nothing but tentacles sticking out of the rocks. This is a good sign.