Fish-less frag tank

[Dmac]

I'm curious about who is running a frag tank with no livestock whatsoever. I'm looking at sitting one up within the next few months and don't really want to have to worry about feeding fish and caring for them. Do you just dose nitrates to the tank along with lighting and flow?

 

[hzheng33]

I have one single snail in my 15gal

 

[Dmac]

So you just feed the coral?

 

[hzheng33]

So you just feed the coral?

I don’t feed any of my corals

 

[gill]

Couldn't you just periodically (1x per week) ghost feed as if there were fish? I've never dosed nitrates, it always seemed... too clinical.

 

[Dmac]

I didn't think the coral would thrive with no nutrients.

 

[dball711]

How big is the frag tank, fish poop is great coral food.

 

[Dmac]

I'm probably not going to do anything bigger than 40 gallons.

 

[Cook]

I would think that both nitrates and phosphates would have to be dosed to give it a shot? There are corals that need to be target fed that could work as surrogates for fish, but I think that defeats the purpose of not having to worry about caring for them? Based on my experience, I wouldn't do it. My Red Sea 170 that I setup as a frag tank had only one fish in it and the corals were always super pale, slow growers. Dinos were a problem for me also. It wasn't until I moved the same frags into another tank with a decent bio load that I realized how nutrient starved they were.