Plank Feeding Calculation
How Much to Feed?
The Plank feeds Reef Jerky very precisely and very slowly so you can literally "dose" plankton into your reef. When making the switch from Frozen to Freeze Dried the most asked question we get is how much Reef Jerky to use and how long to run the Plank.
The first thing to know is that the food hopper is designed to hold approximately 200ml of Reef Jerky or similar freeze dried food. By weight, this is about 1oz (28g) of Reef Jerky. This means Reef Jerky's density is approximately .14g/ml. These weights don't apply to pellets and other types of food, as they have different densities.
The Plank will dispense 0.07g of Reef Jerky in 30 seconds, or 0.14g/min. That means 1 ml (or 1cc) of Reef Jerky per minute. In terms of frozen cube equivalent, this means about 3 minutes of Plank runtime will dispense roughly 1 "cube" (by volume, not weight) of Reef Jerky. As explained in the video below, this can be broken up into multiple, smaller feedings per day.
As a real world example, Justin's personal tank contains 19 fish, including three big tangs and one rather old and fat genicanthus angelfish. The Plank on this tank is currently set to feed 7 times per day for 2 minutes at a time (every 2 hours between 8am and 8pm). This equates to 14 minutes of total runtime, or approximately 4.5 cubes per day. This lasts almost exactly two weeks between refills. At 1cc/min, the Plank can hold about 200 runtime minutes worth of Reef Jerky. You can base a recurring refill reminder on your calendar on this. What's handy is that we offer an auto-ship option for Reef Jerky, so you can use the above figures to calculate how often you will need to refill your Plank, and have fresh food automatically delivered as needed.