Feed LR?

[mony97]

Hello everyone quick question, I read on a different thread that you should feed your LR? Is this correct, if so what should I be feeding, and how often?
Hope this is not to dumb of a question..

 

[handbanana]

I just asked you the same thing in my post.

 

[mony97]

Saw that haha, I have no idea and didnt want to hijack your thread to find out.

 

[robertmathern]

your rock is not alive it is the things that live on and in your rock that make it live.Most if not all of it eats leftover food and the bacteria eat amonia, nitrites and nitrates. You do not have to feed the rock but you will need to keep steady calcium levels to grow coraline on it.

 

[mony97]

Okay cool , thats what I thought just wasnt sure on some termonology

 

[handbanana]

Now I know too.

 

[reefkprz]

your not feeding the rock persay, your feeding the life on it. if your tank is fishless you will need to feed the "rock" aka all the bacteria and microfauna that inhabits the rock. just about any foods will work. regular fish foods etc. in an amount low enough not to promote nuiscance algaes but to keep the bacteria alive and the microfauna alive. if you dont feed anything to a fishless thank the micro fauna and bacteria WILL slowly starve. this will reduce biodiversity, and lower bacterial colony densities, making a spike more likely on the influx of nutrients, aka the addition of a fish and its foods.

 

[robertmathern]

Originally Posted by reefkprZ
http:///forum/post/3199313
your not feeding the rock persay, your feeding the life on it. if your tank is fishless you will need to feed the "rock" aka all the bacteria and microfauna that inhabits the rock. just about any foods will work. regular fish foods etc. in an amount low enough not to promote nuiscance algaes but to keep the bacteria alive and the microfauna alive. if you dont feed anything to a fishless thank the micro fauna and bacteria WILL slowly starve. this will reduce biodiversity, and lower bacterial colony densities, making a spike more likely on the influx of nutrients, aka the addition of a fish and its foods.
Well put my friend well put

 

[mony97]

Thx reefkprZ that description definetly helps.

 

[cranberry]

When one talks of feeding the tank they are taking about adding an ammonia source to feed the front line bacteria in the nitrification process. Adding food to the tank ultimately does this as when the food decomposes is releases ammonia, but this can also be done by adding pure ammonia as well.

 

[bizmike]

New guy question:
I have a 20 gal tank cycling - about 1 week in. It has about 15-20 lbs LR that I was keeping in my cold garage in a bucket. Ammonia is about 2.0.
Should I be feeding that rock (or the stuff on it) during the cycling? I see some worms in there so I don't know how dead the rock is, but I'd like to keep it as alive as possible.

 

[cranberry]

An ammonia of 2 may be good enough. Before you add fish/coral/whatever, test it with an inch piece of table shrimp or the like. I tie mine on a string so it doesn't decompose in there and just have it dangling in the water column. I remove it before it gets too funky.