How much should I feed the fish?

[xcross]

I just added a pair of clowns and pair of green chromis to my mixed reef tank. I must say I was perfectly happy doing water chemistry for corals only but my wife and daughter didn't think it was an aquarium without fish ;-)

I bought some frozen food from the LFS, something called 50/50 which is brine shrimp and blood worm. It comes in little cubes of about 3 grams each.

How much should I be feeding and how often? I'm looking for something like grams per inch of fish (is that being ridiculously precise?) I've read that the most common newbie mistake is to over feed and while I want to keep the fish healthy I don't want to cause water quality problems with a bunch of uneaten food decaying.

Chris

[rssjsb]

I can't reduce it to a mathematical formula, but you really only need to feed them once a day. Four fish won't eat very much.

First, I would get rid of the 50/50 - brine shrimp are essentially like popcorn (minimal nutritional value) and blood worms are not worms but insect larvae that are very hard for fish to digest. Fortunately, clowns and chromis are not picky, so you can feed them pellets (I like New Life Spectrum Thera A 1 mm pellets for that size fish, but there are several pellets you can buy) as a staple, with frozen mysis or chopped table shrimp or other frozen seafood a few times a week.

As to the amount, try a little and see how long it takes them to eat it. They should be able to eat what you put in in five minutes with very little left to sit around in your tank. You've probably got bristle worms and other critters that will eat whatever escapes the fish, so I wouldn't worry too much, but you still don't want a lot of extra food sitting around affecting your water quality.

I know this wasn't the precision you were looking for, but so much depends on what you're feeding, how big your fish are, and what's in your cleanup crew. Hope this helps.

[duncaholic]

I feed my 75g with new life spectrum 1mm almost exclusively...I have to throw in a cube of mysis from time to time for my bangaii...but pellets are the way to go IMO.