I wanted to share some information about Reed Mariculture products I have been sampling and some video of some type of spawning event that I captured in my 30g cube several days ago. It was about an hour before lights out and I started to notice some tiny little specks all over the tank. Recently, I started feeding Roti Feast by Reed Mariculture after winning a bottle in a raffle along with some Phyto at a CMAS club meeting where Randy Reed was presenting on 9/22/07. Very down to earth and answered all questions. There facility holds 2,500,000 gallons of saltwater. Yes, folks - millions:eek: Pretty cool stuff. He talked about some new products that are coming out including some red puff ball macroalgae for tangs:)He really hit home with his philosophy on feeding with bottles as opposed to the typical frozen packaging we all know and love. Basically it is grab the bottle from the fridge, gulp, gulp, gulp into a collection cup with a small convenient opening in the cap to easily dose your tank. I have been using their phytopheast product over the past year and have aded a couple bottles of tiggerpods into the cube as well. I dose phyto every other day typically 15 minutes before the lights go out. Sometimes if I am up at night I will dose in the dark so everything in the tank can benefit from it. I really like the idea of holding 6 species of microalgae in one convenient storable bottle. I know every sized animal is getting some of the best microalgae strains available and for a very reasonable cost, more so if you buy bigger bottles.

Again, I just started feeding Roti Feast, which is a bottle of:

"5 million rotifers in the 6 ounce bottle, and 14 million rotifers in the 16 ounce bottle (Brachionus plicatilis, 150-275 microns) and millions eggs (40-75 microns), gut-packed with Phyto-Feast."*

* qoute from Reef Nutrition Website located here:

Roti-Feast (http://www.reefnutrition.com/rotifeast/index.htm)

Again a very easy feed great for hard corals and any zooplankton loving animals. Dosing your refugium with a combination turkey baster/syringe device of Roti & Phyto Feast is a great mix. Being only a couple weeks of trying this combination I have certainly witnessed a spawning event in the tank. I was really unsure of what took place even after going to bed. Basically it just looked like thousands of little specs grouping together in three different parts of the tank up in the corners. When I first noticed them the pumps were on and they filled the whole water column. Basically I was skimming them out as they went through the plumbing down to the sump. I quickly turned off all the pumps and after the water settled I can see these huge groupings of what I now know to be little microshrimp of some kind. Unfortunatley I did not have a magnifying glass or I could probably give a better id. I will certainly be getting one. The last few nights when I looked into the tank I am seeing hundreds of different sized microshrimp swimming around. I use a red LED head lamp you can buy at Home Depot - pretty geeky but works great.:) You can notice towards the end of the video as it is clearer the little buggers kind of swimming around in the front right corner of the tank. The video is a little choppy and not much in focus for most of it. When something like this happens you really feel rushed to capture it before it is gone. At least that is what I was thinking at the time.

Well here you go, a little spawning event in my 30g cube.

Video of Spawning? - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting (http://s181.photobucket.com/albums/x278/jmemije11/?action=view&current=DSCF1499.flv)

They were definitely not clown fish eggs as they were too small and I definitely have not seen my 11-12 year old clowns lay eggs in a long time. I thought maybe the Reef Nutrition Roti Feast eggs may have hatched? But after seeing the little ciliated shrimp did I realize the Roti Feast could have quite possibly bloomed a big swarm of little zooplankton into the system.

I have to say if it happened one hour later I would have been in bed and my skimmer would have pulled the majority of them out. I wondered if these events could have taken place similarly in the past. Shortly after I took the video I fed more Roti-Feast and PhytoFeast and kept the skimmer off for the night. Three days later I shined an LED on the side of the tank and was pretty shocked at how many critters were swimming over the substrate, tank corners, back glass, rock and at the base of the sand. I then realized that this kind of event could not have occured in the past with the visual numbers of new life that entered the water column. I had not seen a bloom of life at night since the first 4-5 months of starting this cube. The only thing I had changed really was the feed I was using. Now I have little buggers swimming all over the sand and live rock of this 30g cube with no refugium. Pretty cool stuff:up:
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I want to mention in no way am I affilitated with Randy Reed or Reed Mariculture. I really enjoyed listening to Randy Reed speak and be able to ask him direct questions about the Roti Feast product. I love the Reef Nutrition products and thank them for brigning life back into my reef.:agree:

Jim Memije(bubbletip)

Jim,

Very cool! You might want to head on over to ProjectDIBS.com with news of your spawning event.

I thought maybe my long windedness would spark some interest. I guess not:(

So to make it a little more interesting I thought I would bring up some additional information Randy provided. I guess back in 1995(same year I started reefkeeping), Randy and his brother(who he explains is the PHd Biologist) really wanted to start a business harvesting high quality(shellfish allergy safe) oysters. So Randy's brother decided to try feeding various strains of phytoplankton as their main diet. What they found is the oysters required an excessive amount of microalgaes and in the process people around the world were inquiring in purchasing the phytoplankton and not the oysters. 12 years later they have 2.5 million gallons of saltwater out in California to aid in the feeding of many animals throughout the world. Pretty cool stuff.

Randy talked about their largest consumer of the Reef Nutrition products in Norway where they are trying to re-introduce the Saltwater Cod population back into our oceans. It was done for years throughout the Pacific Northwest Salmon Industry. Little did Randy and his brother know that they would make contacts all over the world that have contributed to the continuation of high quality natural feeds for our marine & reef hobbyist aquariums. They actually have only recently offered the aquarium industry products as the majority of their products are shipped to fisheries and hatcheries around the world.

One of the topics that hit really hard was Randy's explanation of why the mysid shrimp used in our frozen feeds are actually freshwater mysid that don't have the nutritional omega 3 fatty's that we are looking for in our feeds. Marine mysid are apparantly much more difficult to culture and raise. They actually culture, raise and sell "live" marine mysid. They are pretty expensive though. Must not get a large yield. I think everyone was shocked to hear this news and questioned the nutritional value of freshwater mysid immediately. The unanimous answer to every question about freshwater mysid fell back on supplementing Selco, Selcon, or other marine vitamin supplements. The good news was Randy's announcement that they would be releasing a new product of bottled marine mysid for reef aquariums. I am sure this product will be fantastic with a great shelf life included.

Jim,

Very cool! You might want to head on over to ProjectDIBS.com with news of your spawning event.

It was pretty cool. I would imagine this has had to happen before just without my knowledge. The critters are getting denser each night and I have seen a big difference in my coral as well:)

What types of microalgae and zooplankton have you tried feeding Carmie? How often do you feed and when do you feed?

Jim,

I didn't know about Reed and all the commercial stuff. I even talked to them at MACNA. I feed DT's Phytoplankton and frozen Cyclopeeze. I got a sample pack of Coral Frenzy at MACNA and have fed it a couple times. I believe that I have seen more polyp extension with the Coral Frenzy. I tend to feed every other day.

Awesome! I will buy a bottle of Dt's every once and a while to mix things up a bit but predominantly use the Phyto Feast. I will certainly continue to use the RotiFeast as well and am thinking of trying out the Arctipods - these pods are supposed to be great for finnicky fish like mandarins. Carmie, I also use cyclopeeze in my reef tanks. It is a beautiful thing how many different sized feeds there are for our systems these days.

I particularly like the concept of pulling a bottle off of the refrigerator shelf and adding it to the tank in a clean easy way. There are definitely some great products available to us these days in the reef hobby:)

I too like to mix up what I feed. There is a whole banquet available to our fish. My son jokes that I have more fish food in the fridge than people food.