Feeding question

ok, I was just reading another thread and that led me to google for a refresher course of the food chain in the ocean.. and me with my lighting ideas, started applying it to feeding ideas..

So.. question, In a Reef tank, would it be beneficial to feed your tank the largest variety of foods during feeding? Meaning Phytoplankton, Zooplankton, Rotifers/Oyster Feast, actipods/cyclops, and then foods like Mysis, bloodworms (sorry, my fish love them, I can't stop feeding it to them), spirulina, etc, and up into larger foods if your fish require it.

When I was thinking about lighting, and how the entire spectrum seems to give corals the most colors I started to wonder if feeding a small mix of every particle size food daily would be beneficial for the tank. I know the food is all dead for the most part (can culture your own or a few LFS will sell cultured live Phyto or Rotifers), but the hope is the food will feed the living ones in your tank that are one step up the food chain from the food.

Is it possible to "dial in" various amounts of each food? I would imagine if fed daily it would be very small amounts, like from .1 - 1ml of each. I am only assuming all those forms of life are also alive in my tank in some form, would this be a good or bad assumption to make? If there are gaps in the food chain within aquariums then feeding food for something that isn't there to eat it is just going to foul the water.

In the past I have usually only fed Rotifers/Oyster feast as my small particle food and only a few drops a week, mostly relied on my fish to feed the tank through their waste. Just curious if I could do a better job at feeding the entire tank.

The voodoo part was the part I was hoping there was a better answer as of today. I was hoping some progress had been made that I just wasn't aware of / kept up on. ie, being able to measure the intake levels of certain foods in your tank to know what the proper amounts to feed them are. I can't think of a way to measure the intake of foods, nor can I think of a way to accurately measure the amount of different life forms in my tank that would consume the food. I guess I was hoping for that magic answer to those questions.

Anyway... now I know at least as of today it is still voodoo. So that being said, what types of foods and how much of each would you suggest in the different micron ranges? Obviously every tank is different, but just throwing out wild numbers as an example, so no one use these as fact, but would it look something like this if you fed daily? I am more concerned about the proper ratios to each other, not the total amount because that will differ greatly from tank to tank.

.1ml Phyto
1ml Rotifers or Oyster Feast
2ml Arctipods
then your cubes or other larger food for fish and LPS corals.

Are live foods that much better than dead foods? Obviously the live stuff will be more nutritious but is it a big difference? Big enough to warrant maintaining your own cultures at home? My LFS swears by live rotifers for there SPS tank and I watched the tank during the month they switched from Rotifeast to live rotifers and I could tell the corals looked better and had better polyp extension after switching to live. I just couldn't decide if the task of maintaining a live rotifer culture at home was worth it from watching my LFS maintain theres. For my needs though I would only need a few 20oz or 1liter bottles to culture them in, not a 20G tank like my LFS uses (which makes a ton of rotifers daily but is also quite a bit of work to maintain properly).

And lastly, I see some confusion on the web about Zooplankton/Rotifers. What exactly is the deal here? I thought they were different parts of the food chain, zooplankton was smaller micron size than rotifers, but some sites make a distinction while others class them together as the same thing. Which is it? Edit: Actually, reading more, zooplankton is Brine Shrimp (and many others) but that is the standard zooplankton? Wow, if that is the case I was way off on my food chain with that part.

Thanks!!! That cleared it up.. I was thinking zooplankton was a specific size range of foods, but it is more of a class of foods/living organisms that encompass several ranges of food sizes.

Gotcha.. this is where actually reading the meaning of the name really helps out as I just learned.

Wiki Link

The name of zooplankton is derived from the Greek zoon, meaning "animal", and planktos, meaning "wanderer" or "drifter".

Click to expand...

Ok, after reading the Wiki on it I have to say.. what a dumb term to use in our hobby. For the ocean, fine, but I am specifically thinking of Kent Zooplex food.. what the heck is that really? With Phyto and Roti types of foods you know what your getting, maybe not the exact species, but at least you will know the micron size range, but if a company just labels their food "Zooplex" how do you know what is in it?