A couple of highly unrelated questions

[donwilson]

I feed my serpent star about 2 times a week with an inch and a half of silverside. Should I be looking for the remains of the silverside later or will the star practically devour the entire thing?
How do I go about "Seeding" my dry DSB? I'm not looking for nassarius snails, more along the lines of bristle worms, copepods and such
A LFS has a bag of Copepods (with the phytoplankton green liquid inside) for sale. If I were to buy that, how would I go about adding them to my tank? Would I actually add it to my tank or what?
How many hours a day should I be feeding light to my Chaeto macro algae?

[Ron Reefman]

1) I never find any remains. Also, you feed twice a week? I feed when the stars come out from under the rocks while I'm feeding the fish. That happens maybe once every week or two. They are clean up crew and if you are feeding them all the time, how much clean up will they do? And I've had them for 3-4 years now.

2) Good question. There are a few places online that sell critters for DSB. I haven't used any yet as my DSB is only 9 months old and I don't want to push the developement. I have macro algae, pods, speghetti worms, a turbo snail and some nassarius snails in there already. Does anybody have a favorite seller?

3) I'd check to see that there are live pods in the bag. They don't have much of a shelf life. Acclimate them like you would any critter including dripping in your water. Then I'd add them to the refugium. I assume your DSB is part of a refugium, yes?

4) I turn my refugium light on an hour before the DT lights go off, and turn the refugium light off an hour after the DT lights turn on. The reverse lighting is plenty for the macro algae and the side benefit is it helps stabilize the night time ph drop.

Ron

[crvz]

I've never target fed a serpent star, I've always just allowed them to get whatever food the fish don't consume. Twice a week seems pretty excessive to me. I wouldnt bother looking for leftovers, but you might find in time that that amount of food is a lot of bioload for the tank.

I've never bought a product to seed sand or rock... you're better off just getting a cup or so from someone elses system (such as a the LFS if nothing else). Or get a rock from an established system and it will probably accomplish the same thing.

I would not add the phytoplankton/copepods to your tank. I've never noticed a benefit in doing so.

I would run the light for 12 hours when your main display lights are off.

[funkejj]

My wife feeds our serpent stay at least once a week. With his legs outstretched he is huge his center disc is 3 inches and each leg is 15 inches long +. She started feeding him weekly after we found a 6 line wrasse missing that we had over a year.

You can get sand bed kits, we have never bought one, in a few months you will find that you have all sorts of critters coming out of the wood work.

I added copepods only when I was wanting to boost the population for our mandarins

My sump light is on 24/7.