Underfiltering vs. Overfeeding

[snakeblitz33]

Reef tanks have high nutritional and calorie requirements. Soft corals need some food in the water column, LPS need regular meaty feedings - and even SPS need their 15% not available through photosynthesis. Your fish need to eat, even some inverts need to eat. But, how do you know you are feeding too much or not enough? If your feeding your tank as much as you should, but you are having some cyano and hair algae problems, are you underskimming / underfiltering your tank or should you decrease your feedings and not meet your corals/fish/inverts nutritional requirements?
Besides testing your water parameters for nitrate and phosphates, you could look at your tank and tell if there is any algae growth that is living off of excess nutrients in the tank. But, is this algae growth signifying that your filtration is underpowered or are you overfeeding?
discuss..

 

[snakeblitz33]

bump

 

[flower]

I always made sure I had "extra food" eaters. LOL...let me explain, I wanted my fish and corals healthy so I fed the critters and if i noticed too much waste I purchased snails, serpent stars, shrimps and hermit crabs. My problem with cyano was fleeting. The only time I ever had a hair algae problem was when I had mixed miracle mud in the sand in an effort to grow sea grass....biggest mistake I ever made.