Feeding Time

This is a beautiful Flame Angle. He is a Dwarf Angle that we quarantined for two weeks before we put him in the demo tank. He was always a good eater when he got what he wanted: frozen food. So far after four weeks in the demo tank, he has not eaten when we have given the tank pellets only. However, the other Angle fish in the demo tank, the Regal Angel, is a picky eater too. He eats only pellets.

As we mention in The Reef Aquarium DVD, A Set Up & Maintenance Guide, you can see this Regal Angle is from the Pacific Ocean by his beautiful yellow belly.

So what do we do? We have two beautiful fish that we want to keep alive and healthy. We have tried to train both fish by skipping a few feedings of either all frozen of all pellets, but this has not been successful. Perhaps we could be successful if we challenged the fish harder, or we could end up with a dead fish. These creatures are so magnificent, that we don’t want to chance losing one. So we give in. They are feed twice a day, five or six times a week with both pellets and frozen shrimp or blood worms.

Knowing that all the fish are eating is well worth the minor effort to feed two types of food each feeding. Also, by offering two types of food each feeding, one of the two Angle fish might cross over and begin to eat what they were stubborn about before.

Two weeks later:

Good news, the Flame Angle is eating pellets as well as frozen food. We made sure to introduce the pellets first so he would see his tank mates eat. Fortunately, all the fish in the demo tank eat with a nice sense of urgency. Perhaps the Flame Angle began to realize he was missing out on something good, so he joined in. The pellets we use for our demo tank are New Life Spectrum. We think this is a great food as it is packed with nutrition and helps bring out the colors of the fish.

A Little Extra Goes A Long Way

This is a Becket style MTC HSA-1000 protein skimmer. This is the same protein skimmer we show the viewer how to install in The Reef Aquarium DVD, A Set Up & Maintenance Guide. I used to clean my protein skimmer once a week. All my levels were always good, but now they are even better. What do I do differently? Every once in a while, when I see the skimmer getting low, I used to dial the valve to make the water go higher in the chamber – to keep it at optimal level. However, when the protein skimmer goes lower, that usually means there is some unwanted items in the pond injector. So even though the protein skimmer was at a good level, it was not operation at maximum efficiency. By take just one to two minutes to clean my pond injector which is located in the white piping between the two unions, I find the chemical levels even better than they were. So for the extra minute, unplug your protein skimmer and do a quick rinse of your pond injector. You will be glad you did.