CUC Feeding

[zitra]

I have a question on feeding CUC. I have one sand sifting starfish, one babylonia, couple of hermits and some six turbos. My tank is three weeks running, cycling finished about week ago (NH3 0, NO2 0, NO3 < 5). I had some diatom bloom but nothing major, the hair algae is kicking in these days (I am going to take it easy few days on lights, just couple of hours a day) but is by no means covering everything. I do see some amphipods running about and there is quite a population of copepods on the glass (would say couple in every sq.in). I have no plans for anything else in terms of bioload for another three weeks at least.

The question is how long can I let CUC just scavenge what is in the tank and at what time do I start worrying about starving them? I have actually noticed quite an improvement (cleaner, turned over) in the sand since the starfish started to plow the sand bed. Should I start dropping some fish food in?

I have no experience with marine tanks ... just to be clear.

[Art13]

the sand sifter is a very heavy feeder, from what i've read, most people who have had one unless they have a very large tank, they grow i believe to be about a foot wide, see it going fine for a while and a few months down the road it slowly starves, buries itself in the sand, and dies. Good luck with him, also, the hermits in my tank i drop some pellet food in every now and then as there all my fish are in Q/T at the moment. They also will feed on algae i believe, at least some of them, but are for the most part scavengers.

[zeebies]

Especially with 6 turbos in a new tank, I'd get some algae sheets and rubber band them to a couple of small rocks. Recharge them at least every week.

What I do is take half a sheet, fold it up to the size of a postage stamp and rubber band it to a rock. This way algae pieces don't fly all over the tank. My turbos often park themselves on the algae rocks for a while.

Regarding feeding the sand sifting starfish, my suggestion would be to return the starfish. A three week old tank doesn't have nearly enough food for scavenging and the star will slowly die. Your sand my look cleaner due to the star turning things over, but it is searching for food and not finding any.

Nassarius snails will help with sand turnover but be careful with snails + hermits though. They don't mix well and a lot of people choose one or the other.

Good luck!