feeding

Hi all. I am very new to having fish in my DT. The flow in the DT is quite high, with the corner overflow and return plumbing, 3 Koralia 4's, and 2 Aquaclear 70's. So lots of flow. When I feed my fish, I turn off all the power so that the flakes don't blow away before the fish can eat them. When the feeding is done, I suck up the leftover food with a turkey baster - at least as much of the food as I can see. However, whenever I turn back on the power, I notice that flakes and debris from the sand start flying all over the place and clouding my water. Is there something else I should be doing, or is this normal?

 

Sounds normal to me, that's what you have a skimmer for, most of that stuff should get sucked out the skimmer. The only other thing would be to add a bunch of cleaners to scavenge more of it before you turn the pumps back on, like nassarius snails, hermits, brittle stars, even some corals will grab meaty stuff out of the water column.

Sounds like you're doing OK although if there really is that much left over maybe you're feeding too many flakes?

 

I use

I use a plastic pop-on lid, like for a cottage cheese container, cut a hole in the middle of it, then float it. I use the string from my magnet cleaner to tie up the donut-shaped feeder next to the rim of the tank. When you place the food into the middle, it holds it there for a loooong time and slooowly releases the food. But I think it only works for flakes...I have yet to try any liquidy foods like cubes.

 

3 koralia 4s for a 90G in my opinion is not a very good balance.. you want to have more smaller powerheads rather than few big ones.. for example, if you had 4 koralia 2s and 1 koralia 4 it would be better.. make sure to direct some flow towards the surface of the water as well for better gas exchange..
if you are at a point where you need to turn off alll your powerheads so your fish can have a proper meal.. it means one of the two things.. you are way overfeeding.. and second one is your flow is way too much.. it's a good thing to have a lot of flow, but too much flow can also be bad for corals.. can cause a lot of stress to corals.. but i see that you do not have any corals at this point..
either way.. i would recommend subsituting 2 of the koralia 4s or at least 1 of them and replace them with koralia 2s.. and balance the flow you have on each end of the tank.. and also, if you place a koralia 4 towards the mid section of the back left corner and direct the powerhead along the back glass across to the back right glass.. it will help keep your detrius and left over food in check from not clogging in the rockwork and sand areas..

 

Having 5 powerheads total in the tank I can't imagine needing any more in quantity regardless of how small they are, maybe placement could be adjusted but that is totally dependant on the rock structure and what corals are being kept etc.
Total turnover is about 48x which could be a lot depending on what type of corals you want to keep, total turnover is just a general guideline of course.
If you want to keep a lot of SPS it's probably really good although there might be problems if some corals are getting blasted too much from one direction, that's where wavemakers or controllable pumps like vortechs or tunzes come in because they provide lots of flow but you're not always blasting the coral from one direction, it can be alternated.
If you want to keep lots of LPS and softies it might be a bit much but for SPS or maybe even a mixed reef depending on the layout of the tank I think that's probably pretty good.

 

Thanks for the feedback about my flow. Actually, one of my koralia 4's is on the lower right corner of the tank, pointed downward. It's sole job is to blow away the detritus from behind my liverock (there is no sand there, and it is tough to vacuum there). So I don't know if that one counts toward my total flow. The other 2 koralia 4's are toward the front of the tank at opposite ends, pointed at each other for maximum turbulence. The 2 aquaclear 70's are at the back of the tank pointed at each other in the same way, with filters attached. Given this set-up, do folks still think the flow is too much for a 90 G tank?