Feeding!

[Makaveli]

I've got a couple of platies so far and they're very happy and healthy. One thing I'm curious about is how much I should be feeding them.

Everywhere I read says to feed them what they can eat in a minute or two, twice daily. Well here's what's throwing me off...my platies wait until the flakes float around to the filter and the water shoots them under.

As you can imagine it's hard to measure exactly how much to feed them with this method...the flakes float around and one by one get shot down from the water coming out through the filter. They love catching them midway before they hit the bottom.

Any advice is much appreciated!

 

[Bluethumb]

My tetras pretty much do the same, they'll only go up if absolutely necessary. I only feed my fish every two or three days, once daily. They're fine with it. When I fed them every day, they weren't hungry. I don't know about your fish, but once a day or every other should be fine.

 

[Makaveli]

Thanks for the response. I'm feeding them twice daily and they always seem very hungry and will eat up everything I put in there. I read that overfeeding was more likely than underfeeding so I'm not giving them too much with each meal...but it would be nice to know how much to give them each time. So far it's only two platies...if that helps any.

 

[Bluethumb]

Probably just a pinch, bc I have 5 fish and do 2 pinches. What do you feed them?

 

[Taydan]

Sorry to but in we have started our tank about 8 days ago originally we didn't know what we got (male or female) platies since we have discovered that we had 2 males 1 female and 1 of the males would chase the other constantly so today we went and brought another 2 female and still the male chases the other and won't let him near any of the other females what should we do? Buy more females or separate them? It's constant like every 5 mins unless jumpy stays away in his corner alone which makes us sad any advice is appreciated


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[Bluethumb]

How big is your tank? If its big enough you could get more females, or you would have to separate the males.

 

[Taydan]

We can fit about 3/4 more fish in should I try and get 2 more


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[Bluethumb]

How big is the tank?

 

[Makaveli]

I'm feeding them some color enhancing tropical flakes. Probably going to be getting a couple of guppies in the next week or so also.
I had a little bit of a scare yesterday. I saw red hanging from one of my platies and looked it up and saw "callanus worms"...turns out it was just his droppings that got colored by the pink flakes.

 

[Bluethumb]

Then just a pinch or two of flakes.