Food For Inverts/marine Snow

[mellanby]

I have a 24 gallon nano cube, still have not gotten any fish yet, although water params have been stable for 2 weeks now.

My clean up crew (2 red leg hermits, 2 blue leg hermits, 4 emerald crabs, 1 peppermint shrimp, 5 snails) have done a great job cleaning up the tank,(20 lbs of live rock, 20 lbs of live sand). There is no visible algae on the rocks or the sides of the tank, and I'm wondering if it could be possible that they will not have enough to eat?

I have been reading about Marine Snow, and wanted to know if anyone had used it? I probably will be getting a fish or two this weekend, along with fish food, but until then I don't want my little guys to starve! What about dropping in some raw shrimp pieces??

Thanks.

 

[Donya]

Starving is a problem for snails, particularly grazing species...but quite a few snails (Turbos, Margarites, Nerites, Strombus conches, etc...not sure about Astreas) will eat the dried kelp/seaweed/macro algae sheets that are sold in packets, as long as you use a clip or something to hold it down. Not all snails will eat a single type of dried seaweed though; since I keep mostly snails, I have 2 types to cover the various species I've got. My hermits eat the dried seaweed as well.

 

[AMS]

Marine snow is for filter feeders, your clean up crew does not filter feed.

 

[steelhealr]

Agreed...your snails will be fine for now. Don't go out of your way to add a bioload to your 24G NC. People don't appreciate how precarious water condtions can be in a nano tank. Those guys will fend for themselves. Feed the fish and let the inverts find the leftovers. SH

 

[Donya]

Feed the fish and let the inverts find the leftovers.

Detritivore/omnivorous snails would do ok with that, but strict grazers might suffer from the lag-time for regrowth of sufficient algae, depending on how rapidly the fish are added or if the fish are put off for a while. It wasn't mentioned what type the snails were.

 

[AMS]

If you are really concerned about them not getting enough food you can add a herbivore food such as formula two, and supplement with occasional meaty foods such as mysis. You really dont need to feed a lot, just quite sparingly.

 

[steelhealr]

I've never seen or heard of incidents of small inverts dying of starvation in a nano reef. Most inverts such as astreas, ceriths, trochus snails, etc find enough diatoms and algae to clean off the rocks and glass walls. If you keep shrimp or have a brittle star, eg, and DON'T have fish, you'd obviously want to toss him some mysis or flake.

I really advise against adding extra food, otherwise, to a nano tank except if you've been down the road a bit and you have your water husbandry down pat. This is especially tru to new tank owners as their tanks are on the algae upswing in the beginning. I have never gone out of my way to feed my cleanup crew and outside of what would be considered aging dropout, I have not had a problem. Many inverts are shortlived in the aquarium setting. In fact, I put five nassarius snails in a year ago, considered extremely short-lived animals, and I count three left.

Be very stringent in the beginning about putting food in your tank. Not only does it add nutrients, but it also can add phosphates. Actually, this could be more of a headached than excess nitrates if it fuels an algae or cyano bloom. JMO. SH

 

[mellanby]

Thanks for the advice. I'm planning on getting a royal gramma this weekend, so if they can make it until then, there will be some food floating about.

 

[Donya]

I've never seen or heard of incidents of small inverts dying of starvation in a nano reef. Most inverts such as astreas, ceriths, trochus snails, etc find enough diatoms and algae to clean off the rocks and glass walls.

That's true for many inverts as you said, in a stocked tank with steady algae production, but if the snails are overstocked and all the food is gone for long enough...snails will die, hermits will snack on snails, etc. If the snails mentioned were something like 5 Turbo fluctuosa, that would seem risky to me after seeing the volume of food those snails need to consume to stay healthy. Done carefully the suplimental feeding won't wreck the water, provided it's not left to rot, and a snail death or two creates more problem than a small piece of dried macro IME.

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread, I was just concerned that 5 large snails (since it was not clear what type they were) might wipe out their food source too fast if the fish got delayed a long time for whatever reason, which it sounds like isn't an issue anyway.