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just wondering how come some of you guys miss a day of feeding?

It's a better simulation of nature and gives the fish's digestive system a chance to clear out. Most fish will gorge themselves if there is food available since in the wild they never know when they will next get to eat.

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Unless your species are really tiny or have major metabolisms like leaf fish, its better to give them a starve day a week on the simple premise that its easier for the weaker willed keeper to enforce a single day without food than it is to moderate the daily amounts. Its a practice where a fishs gut has a chance to catch up with itself and empty a little. Fish digestion for the most part is quite slow,and a day off feeding can significantly reduce the chances of constipation, as does changing the types of food regularly. Its about as close to a general rule as I get. The amount of food the fish get 6 days a week though, that should be tailored to the individual as much as possible. Ogothangel and the others made some excellent points there, and you do indeed always have to watch mollies in community, a food level that makes other species maintain good weight can be dominated by and consequently cause mollies and platys to become seriosly obese. Thats why you can use sinking foods and feeding tubes mounted on the tank (simple clear plastic tube mounted with filter pipe suckers) to drop some foods straight to the bottom, and that allows other fish to feed before mollies and platys have "gut bucketed" themselves out every day. Thats kind of why most communities need more than just flake foods, so the slower feeders can eat without the quick feeders becoming morbidly obese.

Part of planning a community should also take into account how fish feed, and at what speed.

mmmm,ok well id better make a fasting day then

hey stealth welcome to
fishprofiles!
oh know i understand thanks LHG

33 gallon 7 neon tetras-5 platys-3 bleeding heart tetras-2 corys-1 rainbow shark-2 L83 gibby plecos

welcome to fp stealth and yea, I agree on the fasting day as well... they may not always get a change to eat in the wild...

I feed most of mine, once a day, and also skip 1-2 days a week feedings for most fish. The important things to remember, are not only the amount of times and the amount each time, but the type of foods and the fish you are feeding their normal wild routine.

As stated already, some fish gorge themselves when they eat. These are usually fish that eat like once or twice a week or maybe even longer in between feedings, in the wild. Some fish eat large amounts of foods only once or twice a week, and sometimes like only once every two weeks. Now feeding them everyday sounds like a good thing, but it is not. Most of the food will go right through them quickly, as their digestive systems are set up to digest the foods slowly, as to get the greatest amount of nutrients out of them with each engorgement. If fed every day, the foods will be pushed through their digestive track faster, thus wasting foods, and causing an increase in fecal waste. Similar to my horn sharks, which get fed once to twice a week. As well as my friends black tip reef sharks, which also get fed once to twice a week. Most of your fish that eat large live foods in the wild, eat this way. If you are feeding your fish worms, live feeders, or any kind of large whole foods, you should consider this when feeding them. As in feeding them larger amounts, less times per week. They will get more out of it, and you will have less waste to clean up after them.

The other consideration of importance is the quality of foods you feed your fish. There are many kinds of fish foods produced. And basically and for the most part, the price of them tells you the quality. Cheap priced fish foods are usually cheap quality as well. The more expensive fish foods are usually the better quality. The cheaper foods usually have a bunch of fillers in them. Fillers are not benefitial to the fish what so ever. They are just something added to the food, to make it appear to you to be more food. It is almost always turned into waste products by the fish. So the fish are also always hungry, as they are not getting enough of the quality needs from the foods you may be feeding. With a high quality food, you can feed less, and the fish will get more of the beneficial needs kinds of substances from the food. In the end, price wise, the quality foods (higher priced) are much better to get and feed than the lower quality. Because you can feed less and get the same results. So the higher quality foods will actually last you longer. As well, the water quality will be better, as there will be less waste produced from the higher quality foods than the cheaper ones. So the fish are healthier all the way around. Not to mention their appearance will be better with these foods. So if you think your fish are eating a lot of fish food when you feed it to them, and you are using cheaper priced food, you may want to consider trying something new, and see if they don't slow down on their consumption.

Another considerattion is the types of foods. Many of the live foods can be fed on different routines as well. Take for example the live feeders used for larger fish. You put a dozen feeders in the tank with your fish. It eats 5 right away, and then stops. You then notice the rest of the feeders are still there a few days later, then gone after that. So you would not keep putting a dozen in everyday, as they would not get eaten quick enough. The same goes for many of the live foods you may feed your fish. Personally I don't care for the feeders, as they can carry diseases into my tanks. I use other live foods, such as night crawlers, red worms, crickets, and locusts when they are available. Many of these will not continue to live in water, but many will. The night crawlers will live for weeks in the water. A great site is to watch a big catfish hunting the substrate, finding and getting a worm out of it. Another live food I use very often is microworms. Many people feed their fry 2, 3, and even 5 or 6 times a day. I feed mine once a day, a large amount of microworms. I raise most of my fry in bare bottom tanks, and you can many times see the microworms still alive on the bottom of the tank, the next day. White worms will also live awile in a tank. Live black worms live forever in a tank. I once was tearing down a tank, that black worms were fed in about a year before I tore it down. When taking the water from it, I siphoned up dozens of black worms out of the gravel. They had been living in there for at least a year! Since then, I have actually placed black worms in almost all my tanks, for quality control. After all, their normal foods are the detritus. So they help to control the waste products in the gravels.

Another thing to increase the quality, is the injection of vitamins and other agents into the foods. When feeding live foods, you can first feed the live foods different stuff to help increase the quality of them. Such as natural coloring agents, suplimental vitamins, etc. I put Astaxanthan powder in my microworms. They eat it and increase the intencity of the red. It is a natural seaweed that is full of red pigment. It helps bring out the reds in many fish that is a perminent change, as it is pigment and not a dye, that is in the skin. This helps only for the reds and orange colors though. And does not harm the fish in any way. In my sharks tiger shrimp, I inject suplimental vitamins, and suplimental iodine (required for keeping sharks healthy).

Thus quality, types (live and processed), wild habits of the fish, amounts, and other things should always be taken into consideration of how much, and when to feed your fish.

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There is always a bigger fish...

To add on to what's already been said (and make things even more confusing!), there are certain fish that graze in the wild and eat all the time; primarily herbivores and detritivores. Albeit, herbivores and detritivores only make up a very small proportion of fishes as a whole and fish that make it into the aquarium trade, but species that fall into these categories do exist. In the wild, most of the food these fish eat is low quality, not very nutritious, or more difficult to digest. The efficiency of eating plant matter or decaying matter is quite low; a lot of food must be eaten to get proper nutrition. Thus, the digestive tract is generally very long, and food passes through the digestive tract quickly, because these fish are eating a lot and trying to get as much nutrition out of it as possible.

For example, I was recently reading an article on the care of Chromis species of damselfish; these fish graze on small plants and algae on the coral reef in the wild, and presumably throughout the day, and it was recommended to feed these fish at least twice a day. The opposite extreme is when a catfish takes down prey that's half it's body length, and can chill out for a week or two without eating again. The different dietary requirements of each fish should also be accounted for. On the other hand, most fish that we keep fall into carnivore or omnivore groups, and usually feed on either zooplankton, crustaceans, or insects as primary meat sources; cladocerans (water fleas) and chironomid larvae (midge larvae, or bloodworms) are often described to be part of the diet of fishes that I have read scientific descriptions of. You can't generalize over all fish, but many fish do have a similar feeding niche in the wild.

Great posts, guys! Apparently there is still juice to squeeze out of this fruit!

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

Hey everyone.. What a great community and thanks for the welcome Excellent info!

Im beginning to realise better qualtiy of food. Feed the fish like you will want to be fed!

Good hgih quality NATURAL stuff..

You guys know how to catch or breed mosquito larvae? I know it might be a bit risky and not safe but to leave a bucket of stagnant water for the mosquito to lay their eggs? hec, I live in a tropical climate!


Hobbyists

For the mosquito larvae I just wait till the egg rafts (look like small black leaves or debris floating on water) to appear ant then put them into a jar with fine netting covering the opening. Usually within two days of that they hatch and I have millions of little larvae (more like hundreds). You dont want them hatchng out where you found the eggs as some if not most of them might get to live to be mosquitoes. As for the little larvay I'm not sure what they eat. Maybe green water. I have been fedding them to some small fish so I haven't grown them bigger yet.
Hope it helped

Now thats some replies. Im liking it when folks get serious on subjects. Benefits all. Plus saves me a hell of a lot of typing lol.

Thanks alot ... But I actually found a few mosquitoes today and I just happen to rest them on the surface of the aquarium and my mollies and guppies ate him instantly! LOL So most likely, the mosquitoes themselves might be ideal and no need for the larvae... We will see though. Discouraging the growth and breeding of mosquitoes is very serious in the caribbean since they are such disease carriers so any barrels and drums of water are to be around the house.

Hobbyists

ok,well thats better explaned,ok what about when your trying to get your fish to spawn,yous would have all herd this b4,CONDITION WITH PLENTY OF LIVE FOODS,wouldnt that mean everyday day feeds?im not saying that the 1 day fasting is wrong,when i get a question answered,its like another 5 spring to mind so yeah im just asking,

Hokese, there is no one single or even two or three only ways to feed your fish. Mostly it goes by each different individual person, as well as each different and individual fish. Some fish may need the live foods to induce breeding, while most of the more common aquarium fish will not. I only use live foods to induce breeding, when most of the other methods fail. The only exception to this rule for me, is when dealing with wild caught fish. With wild caught fish, I almost always use live foods to induce breeding activity. After all, if you don't have to use the more expensive live foods, then you can save your money for more tanks, and thus more fish! As well, there are some wild caught fish that will never accept anything but live foods.

But, as I stated above, with live foods, many times you can just load up the tank, and not have to even feed them for days. As they will not eat all the live foods immediately. This is probably the most natural way to feed fish that would be the closest to resemble the actual way of life in the wild.

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There is always a bigger fish...

On the topic of feeding, what do i feed my fresh water cray fish? Also, any helpful tips for them or maybe direct me to the threads that discuss cray fish...Hes really smart and its only about 4 inches long..



Hobbyists

I feed twice per day. The main feed is at night and might be a combination of bloodworm or brine shrimp and sinking wafers. The morning feed is just a little token feed of flake for those who just can't seem to do without for a whole 24 hours.

I feed once a day, except for the days I drop fruits and veggies in for my rubberlip at night. I have no set schedule for feeding fruits or veggies, just when I have them on hand. My bettas have a stricter schedule, still being 6 days a week and a fasting day this allows me to mix up their diet quite a bit. It didn't take me to long to get into some kind of feeding ritual, plus my fish adapted pretty quickly as well.

Justin

Colts Fan For Life
30g platy tank: 2 sunburst wag platys, 2 redtailed white calico platys, 2 red wag platys, 1 fry(not sure who it belongs to), 1 Golden CAE.
Bettas:1 VT male

im rebelling from what most of these pepole say and i feed mine 2 times a day. they always eat it all up and its keeping them healthy.

i like feesh

Regarding the veggies.. I rtired my comunity tank with some bits of finely chopped organic grown lettuce and they simply will not eat it.. They are very fussy about vegetables...

its a tank with mollies, plates and zebras .. Today I tried tomatoes and neither ate it... Then I put in some flakes and it was the usual feeding frenzy... They simply wont eat their veggies. Anyone had that problem

I want them to eat the veggies/fruits and have a variety in their diet alongside the blood worms, flakes and also wheat germ they eat.

What type of fruits you guys use? any citrus at all or thats a no no? Bananas?

Hobbyists

All of your fish are primarily carnivorous. Granted the livebearers do consume some plant matter in the wild, but I'd wager it's more along the lines of algae than anything remotely lettuce-like. I'm not especially surprised they're not eating veggies.

I'd avoid too much citrus because of the acid. Bananas have been tried with success by someone here.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

OK.. thanks for that Shingami.. I had the assumption that they consumed a more veggie type based diet based on looking at someone's fish diet outline on this site..

They do enjoy several insects like mosquitoes and the larvae. I just dont want to get them too used to fish flakes mainly because its processed. I may try a few diffferent brands for variety...

I saw Acidrain talking about quality of fish food... What brands of high quality fish flake will you recommend. I tend to buy the loose one from the dispensary which is cheaper but IM thinking of going for a different brand..

As you said these fishes ( mollies, platies, angels) are generally carniverous, will they even consume tiny fishes I put for them as food?



Hobbyists

I use TetraMin Pro, it's a pretty good flake that's given me good results. I'm not sure what the "best" flake food is, if there is any. As far as I know, there's no flake that's vastly superior to all the other ones.

Not all meat is the same. Most small carnivores such as mollies, platies, and danios tend to feed on invertebrates such as worms, crustaceans, and insects. That's not to say that they won't eat really tiny fish, it's that it's not part of their main lifestyle to hunt fish and won't add that much to their health. Angels do consume fish, even small tetras, but this is not their main diet; they also tend feed on organisms such as worms and crustaceans. In the home aquarium, Daphnia (water fleas) and bloodworms (red midge or mosquito larvae) are good foods that can be used; these animals, or close relatives, are often found in the natural habitats of fish.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

Great stuff Shinigami.. Also, I like your avatar pic alot. is it a mudskipper

Hobbyists