How much is too much food?

[LexSkizzle]

How do you know if your fish and corals are getting enough food? When is it classified as "overfeeding" the system besides the obvious elavated levels of nitrates, phosphates, etc.?

[Bonebrake]

If your fish don't eat 95% of it in 30 seconds it is too much food.

Feeding corals is specialized and depends entirely on what specific corals you keep.

I feed my fish four or five times a day and spot feed my corals once or twice a week with frozen mysis, krill, and/or cyclopeeze.

[gkyle]

I've seen answers ranging from feeding the fish twice a week to feeding them multiple times a day. I choose to feed my fish as much as I can while still maintaining phosphates at or near zero. For my tank with 3 triggers and 12 other fish, I feed a frozen mix equivalent to 4-5 cubes each day, plus small amounts of pellets twice a day from a feeder. I dose 1 tsp. sugar each day to help keep phosphates low. My frozen mix for the fish also has cyclopeeze, reef chili and other stuff in it, but I also target feed the corals every other day. I wasn't able to feed near this much until I went bare-bottom with the tank and added a ton of circulation to keep food from settling.

[Bonebrake]

That is a lot of food. Whoa...

[Logzor]

Good skimmer and enough flow and you can feed as much as you want...

Its all about import and export~

[bertoni]

If the nutrient levels in the water column are fine, and there's no pest algae, etc, growing, the feeding level likely is fine for the moment. It's hard to say much more than that, since systems vary quite a bit. Over time, the live rock or substrate might adsorb a lot of phosphate, which sometimes seems to be come an issue, but that's hard to gauge.