Well I usually feed mysis, with vitamins (zoe, selcon, zoecon, vitachem(not all together)) and the bottled phyto feast and marine snow. I also incorperate live brine feedings usually every 3 days(depending how long it takes to hatch) + phyto and marine snow again. Then I'll feed my home made food (chopped up, haddock, scallops, green algae, shrimp, brine(frozen), mysis) + phyto and marine snow every once in a while.
Those feedings seemed to have worked for me so far. I always have to incorperate the phyto and marine snow for my red gorg and my coco worm. which needs tons of food to stay alive.
I dont really know how to culture phyto, nor would I know how to keep live cultures live untill they get used up! So I dont know about feeding live to the tank. I know live is better then the bottled stuff, its just common sence, but when you dont know how to keep those cultures or possibly have the time to grow them, you have to resort to other means.
The bottled stuff is pretty much my only choice, be it watered down or not! I also dont think they would really chince you out on phyto in a bottle since its pretty cheap to culture in those amounts, and they'd like customers comming back for their products. But thats my opinion!
Now, how do you know that the marine snow contributed to your cyano outbreak? Do cyano bacteria even like the ingredients in marine snow? I really doubt thats what caused the outbreak. I'd think marine snow particles would be to large for a bacteria to eat, but then again I dont know how large these marine snow flakes are. As a matter of fact I dont even know what it is period! I heard its something that comes off the rocks that corals like to chow down on in the ocean, but thats a simplistic explaination to me.
This was the first bottle I decided to try out, and so far I havent seen any of the bad side effects everyone seems to complain about. %%
So as of now in question is marine snow(do I really need it, maybe, maybe not, I'll just have to research more, and hear more factual opinions to as why its useless/not good for a closed system).
zooplex I was going to buy is by kent
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Reef roids (seems to have all of the items I'm asking about mixed into it
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Phyto
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****Yes I know dont post links, but this is the only site I have personally found that has a decent description of each product. Its also Canadian based site, which ships to the states but much more costly, and not worth it due to the fact its in Toronto, Ontario, Canda. Its like me buying from this site and paying $100 for stuff to be shipped to me, when I can go on another site close and have things shipped to me for much cheaper. Plus I dont agree with the fact that all websites are banned, since what makes the site developers think they are going to stop people from giving eachother tips of whats cheaper ect. Instead of making customers mad about not posting liks ect. (because its annoying haveing to hear someone everytime saying dont do it) why not compete with these other companies and keep people buying from you that way!
Sorry for the read, but I'm a poor student and money is getting tight, so I dont want to buy all these products and find out they are all the same or useless.
Thanks for all the help, and keep the advice comming!
{Removed links - Sorry, but straight links to a store are not easily overlooked.
these products are brand name products that most are familiar with, so links are not needed to make the point and removing them should not sacrifice the quality of discussion. -Ophiura}
