Feeding Fish the Right Way

[johncake]

I've seen the guidelines to feed as much as the fish eat in five minutes but can someone describe the best way to do this?

Is this achieved by dropping a flake or two at a time so that none is wasted?

Any guesstimate about how much food 10 tetras would eat in a day?

[Zic]

I judge me food by how much hits the bottom. If a lot falls to the floor, you're giving them too much. If none hits the floor, you probably aren't giving them enough. You want only a small amount to not get eaten.

Ten tetras won't eat that much in a day. I would guess that a pinch the size of a nickel would be suffice.

[Allivymar]

Depends on the food as well. Some of the pellets I use for the angels do not float.

I've angels, loaches and a plec. I figure (and no [acronym:bd44b32f25="Laughing out loud"]LOL[/acronym:bd44b32f25] this was NOT done scientifically) each angel will be full on 5-10 Spectrum pellets, or 3-6 Bio-Blend pellets and drop in what seems to be an appropriate amount (I don't count them). The loaches and the plec also seem to inhale them, so I always make sure theres a little extra for them. The loaches get 2-3 small Tropical Sinking wafers, the plec 1-2 algae wafers (hes big; bout 8 inches). Everyone seems to eat everyone elses food tho...

The pellets go in twice a day, wafers once.

My WILD guess would be each tetra would eat about 3-6 medium sized flakes comfortably, twice a day. But I obviously don't know for sure.

[TankGirl]

Give them a small pinch between index and thumb, and observe how long they take to eat it. If they gobble it up within a minute or so, then maybe another pinch. I can usually tell when I have overfed by how much food I am vacuuming up from the gravel with water changes. After a little while you will get a good feel for how much they need. Overfeeding is WAY worse than underfeeding, [acronym:619c30174d="In my opinion"]IMO[/acronym:619c30174d].

[littlelouie]

I have 5 cardinal tetras and a clown loach and when I feed them flakes I crush the flakes into smaller bits (like the size of dried herbs in a jar) so that the fish don't get bloated. They eat the flakes b4 they have absorbed much water so the smaller pcs seem to be a better idea to me

I do 2 seperate pinches per feed, that is, I wait until all of the 1st pinch has been eaten b4 adding the 2nd. (I don't add a 2nd if the 1st lot was not eaten entirely). I worked out that a pinch is enough to float about and feed them in 2min or so as they eat in a frenzy

With brine shripm and bloodworms I usually thaw a whole cube (u know the little block blister packs), then feed a small amount at a time and only add the next amt if the previous one has been consumed. I generally throw about 1/2 the cube away but recently with the "fasting" 1 per week they eat 3/4 of the block

Hope this helps john