A tank's diet

[illuminum]

When you feed your fish, do you just put in a standard amount or do you just keep putting flake until the fish seem more or less uninterested? I know I'm not over feeding my fish, but am afraid that I may be underfeeding them. So, how do you guys/gals do it?

Also, what would you consider a well balanced diet? I feed my fish mostly flake, but also use frozen bloodworms and hikari algae wafers for my plecos.

Is zuchini a necessary part of a fish's diet? I have never fed them that.

 

[lyquidphyre]

Fish can go a good while with out food, so if you are feeding them once a day you are good, even if its a small amount.

 

[Pufferpunk]

The rule of thumb is to feed them as much as they'll eat in 5 minutes, w/one off day of no feeding/week.

 

[grimlock3000]

Most of my fish usually hover right near the top and try to get everything before it sinks during feeding time. I put in a little bit of food at a time and watch them eat it. Once the flakes start sinking and moving around in the tank I leave it at that since some of the fish are full. This ends up being about one or two minutes of eating food near the surface, then afterwards the fish that are still hungry go poke around the tank looking for leftovers.

I always feed the fish in the morning and then feed them again during the night about every other day. I mix up the food too to make sure they get good nutrition. The staple food is Omega One Veggie Flakes, and I usually toss in a little Bio Blend Topical + Color Enchancer, Freeze Dried Bloodworms, or TetraMin flakes at random intervals.

Oh, and I drop in one Hikari Algae Wafer once in a while too. I drop it in during the night for the Pleco, usually when most of the algae in the tank has been eaten.

I used to fast my fish one day a week, but did not see any benefit to doing so on a regular basis. If the fish get overfed one day, I do not feed them the next, but other than that they always get food.

 

[Scott1980]

I just feed mine reg flake food everyday. But I do feed them a little at a time so not all it ends up in the gravel

 

[tbonem91]

I've got my fish on an automatic 12 hr feeder - works out pretty nice but it took a while to get the adjustment correct so it dropped the right amount of food.

I think the fish recognize the sound of it going off sometimes... kinda like deer learn to recognize the sound of a corn feeder when they've been around it enough.

 

[malkore]

I feed my fish twice a day, different things, and I don't over do it either. I too fear that I'm under feeding, or that certain fish aren't getting enough food, so that's how I deal with it.
No fasting day, and occasionally I only feed them once a day.
My betta only gets food once a day...some daphnia and a few bio-blend pellets.
My goldfish will get 2 feedings a day.
My blue rams get 1-2 feedings per day as well.

 

[Mr Burns]

i feed my fish twice a day, and i only feed what i can see get eaten in about two minutes (because they get fed twice.) they get flakes about a half hour after the lights come on, then a half hour before the lights go out. they ALL come to the top to eat. it's funny seeing a 13" pleco completely vertical sucking at the surface for floating flakes. it usually gets special treatment as i have grown accustomed to handfeeding it flakes and bloodworms. my redtail has developed a great personality since i added the new fish in september...it now with flip upside down and nibble at floating flakes. it has also gotten better at catching sinking flakes in it's mouth, so it still missed a lot of times. i'll typically drop in three or four algae wafers at night, and on sunday everybody gets the weekend special: bloodworms! on sunday, i only feed at night.

however...

last night i hand fed my pleco a slice of zuchini for the first time. he/she went absolutely nuts over it, so did the red tail shark. at one point, it latched on so tightly with it's mouth that i could pull it and the zuchini around the top of the tank. i could even see him eating the seeds as they came loose. after there was a sizeable hole in the zuc, i went out to the kitchen and cut up two more slices for the veggie clip. this morning when i woke up, both slices were about 90% gone. i have some romaine lettuce that i'll try tomorrow. i'm very excited about this because i had a feeling that my loaches were getting all the algae wafers i was dropping in. i also don't recall seeing the long pleco poops for several months. i'll probably keep up with the zuchini, and cut back the algae wafers to one or two per night.

everything is fresh..i don't like the idea of softening the veggies by boiling, although spinach leaves might be an exception. they should naturally soften up after a day in the tank...

 

[Mr Burns]

just put in a fresh, thicker slice of zuchini...my plec took about two minutes to pick up on it, but my red tail was trying to eat the stuff out of my hand. i took the skin of it off this time...i don't want to take a chance with the waxes and chemicals they use on vegitation nowaday, even though i rinsed and scrubbed the whole vegitable last night with Fit.

 

[PlatyLady]

I feed my big tank a teeny tiny bit several times a day when I work from my home office - and have the time! This gives me reason to take "fish breaks" - (I don't drink coffee, can't take coffee breaks!) Plus, they're foragers (is that a word?), so they naturally eat all day, or so I understand. There's never left-overs that float to the bottom.

As for what I feed them... I never used to remember to keep track, so I started a fish diary awhile back, just one of those little calendar books with the days pre-printed. I record what I'm feeding them for the week, when I've dropped in different food, plus how they look/behave, anything odd or out of the ordinary, etc...