Travis: What's up guys? Welcome back to FishOfHex, my name is Travis. In this video, as promised, I'm going to show you guys how I feed the tank the food that we made last week. If you're not familiar with that video, I will put a link in the description so you guys can see exactly how I made this. Now, not only does this food take care of all of the fish, but it also feeds the coral at the same time. With that said, let's go ahead and get started. As you guys remember from the previous video, we went ahead and put all the food into these one-quart freezer bags, laid them flat, and got all the air out and then put them in the freezer.
As you can see, they don't always freeze evenly, and depending on how much you put in there, it can be actually difficult to break off a chunk of this food. I don't mind coming in here and bashing on it a little bit, breaking up chunks, what I do is, I just break it up in all the pieces that I like and then, I just transfer it into another bag and then, use that throughout the week or a couple of weeks or however long it takes to use it up. For the sake of this video, we're going to skip that step and just go in here and take out a pretty big chunk.
This is about average size of what I feed every day. I don't really have a set amount, it's just basically what I feel is appropriate for the tank, based on the nitrates and phosphates. Their current levels, how the fish feel, the coloration, how the pulp extension is, it's just how I feel. This is about average, let's move over to the tank and you guys can see that they get pretty excited about this stuff. This is something that I've been feeding for about a year, not only in this tank but we had the 125, I did a similar thing. Now, my recipes for food have changed over time but it's basically the same concept. What I do is I just throw it in frozen and they go ahead and go to town on it, do their thing.
As you guys can see that it actually starts to spread out through the entire tank. At this point, that's when I start feeding the coral and that's really what I find to be important. Not only does every fish have plenty of time and opportunity to get their fill, the inverts, as you can see, the cleaner shrimp are getting in there, the starfish is on the bottom moving around, everybody in this tank or everything in this tank gets an opportunity to eat with that amount of food in this type of food. As you can see, it does stain the water column but it does fall to the bottom and, again, everything is getting an opportunity to eat.
Now, after a little while, with the flow being off, and I probably should mention this. When I feed, I have the main return pump off, the skimmer off as well as the powerheads. This is up for about ten minutes and we are fast-forwarding here. What happens is, I let them feed, that way, nothing gets down into the filter socks. It has time to get throughout the tank and the coral get an opportunity to eat. Then, as you can see here, we're going to go on and take the fast-forward off. Then, the powerheads are going to kick on and they'll stay on for about three to five minutes before the return pump kicks on.
Now, I have this set-up so that the flow will move all the food around, again, feeding the corals, allowing fish or anybody or anything that didn't get an opportunity to eat to go ahead and take advantage of that before the return pump kicks on and starts dumping all the waste into the filter socks. Over the last year that this tank has been up, I've had a lot of people come over and say that the camera just doesn't do it any justice, the colorations just so much better. The coral, with the filter and all the stuff on the camera, just really doesn't make the tank look as good as it does in real life.
There's a lot of hobbyists that have come over and seen what it looked like July when I actually finished it and we got the lighting over it, and all the growth that has happened between now and then. You guys can check out my previous videos when I did the one-year update on this tank, it's just insane how fast this whole system has been growing. By far the fastest tank I've ever owned and yes, I'm really proud of it. I really like how things are coming together. I feel that between the phytoplankton, and this type of food, and this type of feeding method, and making sure that the nutrients are in a good level, that the tank is just exploding.
It's better than I ever expected and I can't wait to see what it turns into in the next few years. With that said, you guys can see in the upper-right hand side that I actually added a frag rack and, believe it or not, there is a frag tank attached to this but it's to the point now where I have to go in there every couple of days and cut coral just to keep them from killing themselves. I go ahead and frag them, put them in the frag tank, and really, I'm just out of room. Yes, I really love this tank and that's what I'm getting to, is that between the feeding, the growth, the coloration of the corals, how happy the fish are and just, overall, the tank is, by far, the best that I've ever had. I'm pretty stoked about that.
If you guys have any questions about making your own food, why I decided to do it, please check out that previous video. Again, the link will be in the description. Give it a try. It's a little bit of money up front if you don't have any wholesale accounts and you can't get that stuff locally. You might spend a little bit more money but trust me, it's well worth it. Being able to bring all those types of foods together, grind them up, and allow them to be fine enough that the corals can use them, it's just great. With that said, I hope you guys enjoyed the video and I will see you guys later with another one. Peace.
