Fasting?

[PBirdsong]

I don't have the book infront of me to quote, but when I first got into the hobby I read that you should "fast" your fish one day a week to clean out their digestive track. So my girlfriend and I have done this now since the beginning. The fish are all fine, but I wonder if anyone else really does this or not. It just recently occured to me that I should raise this question here. What do you guys think?

 

[tetrin]

yep...i do it once a week too. breaks my heart to see the greedy pigs beg, but i still do it.
just as a sidenote, fasting is used to induce spawning for mbuna. it seems when you cut their rations off, they get bored and you know... ...

 

[malkore]

I wouldn't call it necessary, but it's certainly not detrimental to their health. You're better off doing that, than feeding twice a day and risking over-feeding.

fish in the wild have to look for food all day...they are spoiled by being fed daily by us.

feel free to keep it up.

 

[PBirdsong]

Cool, thanks guys.

 

[shawmutt]

I do too

 

[QTOFFER]

All of my tanks miss at least one daily feeding because I'm either away for the weekend, or I get home from work very late. I don't know if it' better for them, but I can say that it does no harm. It's so much easier to overfeed than to underfeed. With the exception of some catfish, it's pretty hard to starve an otherwise healthy fish! In the wild, how many fish do you think enjoy the luxury of finding high quality flake food every single day?

How do you know that your fish are getting enough to eat? In cichlids, it's easy - look for a full, plump, not sunken forehead. In most other fish, look at the area between the dorsal fin and tail, above the midline - it should be full, not sunken. If you've ever had a diseased tetra stop eating and waste away, you'd know what I mean.