HannahJ
Aquarium Advice Activist
Well, I'm back from college for the break, and had a few questions I wanted to throw out to you all now that I have time for internet leisure.
For you BGK keepers out there, just how much are you feeding your Black Ghost Knife? Mine's now somewhere between 8 and 9 inches and he's still getting the same single cube of frozen bloodworms a night as he was when he was 4 inches. It seems to me that the time has come to icrease his food ration (though he's certainly far from skinny so I know he's not starving). However, doubling the amount of food he gets in a night seems a little much. When do I need to start ramping up his intake, and how would you recommend going about it?
More details: He really gets more like a bloodworm cube 5 or 6 nights out of the week, with one night off and maybe one night every couple of weeks where I try to get him to eat some other frozen treat, such as glassworms, beefheart, brine shrimp, daphnia, or whatever else, which he usually just picks at (leaving a lot of cleaning to do in the morning and a lot of uneaten food in the freezer). He also gets a sinking carnivore pellet tossed in on occaision, though this isn't that regular--and to be honest, the plecostomus eats those for all I know.
Currently, the idea I have for increasing his food intake is to feed a bloodworm cube along with some sinking food (I have carnivore wafers, shrimp pellets, and bottom feeder (omnivorous) wafers, all of which he ate regularly prior to me making the jump to frozen foods somewhere around a year ago) on some sort of mixed schedule (say, a bloodworm cube every day with some sinking food every few days) and slowly increasing the regularity of the sinking foods until it seems like he's eating two bloodworm cubes worth of food then switching to that. This would obviously take place over a long period of time, say, the next year, or longer even if his growth doesn't stay as quick as it has been. Any thoughts on this plan?
Really, just any general thoughts on BGK growth and feeding would be appreciated.
Tank information for the curious: He's in a 58 gallon tank with one tankmate, a very fat 6-7" plecostomus I took in from my mother, after she, in an ill-advised move, bought him for her 15 gallon tank. The plecostomus gets an algae wafer a night, and the occaisional slice of cucumber when I'm feeling generous.
For you BGK keepers out there, just how much are you feeding your Black Ghost Knife? Mine's now somewhere between 8 and 9 inches and he's still getting the same single cube of frozen bloodworms a night as he was when he was 4 inches. It seems to me that the time has come to icrease his food ration (though he's certainly far from skinny so I know he's not starving). However, doubling the amount of food he gets in a night seems a little much. When do I need to start ramping up his intake, and how would you recommend going about it?
More details: He really gets more like a bloodworm cube 5 or 6 nights out of the week, with one night off and maybe one night every couple of weeks where I try to get him to eat some other frozen treat, such as glassworms, beefheart, brine shrimp, daphnia, or whatever else, which he usually just picks at (leaving a lot of cleaning to do in the morning and a lot of uneaten food in the freezer). He also gets a sinking carnivore pellet tossed in on occaision, though this isn't that regular--and to be honest, the plecostomus eats those for all I know.
Currently, the idea I have for increasing his food intake is to feed a bloodworm cube along with some sinking food (I have carnivore wafers, shrimp pellets, and bottom feeder (omnivorous) wafers, all of which he ate regularly prior to me making the jump to frozen foods somewhere around a year ago) on some sort of mixed schedule (say, a bloodworm cube every day with some sinking food every few days) and slowly increasing the regularity of the sinking foods until it seems like he's eating two bloodworm cubes worth of food then switching to that. This would obviously take place over a long period of time, say, the next year, or longer even if his growth doesn't stay as quick as it has been. Any thoughts on this plan?
Really, just any general thoughts on BGK growth and feeding would be appreciated.
Tank information for the curious: He's in a 58 gallon tank with one tankmate, a very fat 6-7" plecostomus I took in from my mother, after she, in an ill-advised move, bought him for her 15 gallon tank. The plecostomus gets an algae wafer a night, and the occaisional slice of cucumber when I'm feeling generous.
