Tetra behavior

[PESCATORI]

Greetings:

I completed 4 weeks of fish-less cycling of a 30 gal tank last Friday. On Saturday I purchased 4 Neon Tetras and placed them in the tank after suspending the plastic bag in the water for about 20 minutes. These fish redefine active...they were all over the tank making a complete assessment and finally settled down in the evening. I fed them and they went crazy again vacuuming everything in sight. When I fed them this Morning I noticed that they were not as eager to pounce on the food flakes. This evening when I got settled down I fed them again. They appeared to be much more particular about what they took in. In fact, they would pass up food and continue to hunt making quick dashes around the Aquarium. They are swimming fine, schooling as usual but they seem to be very finicky over the food. I have reading material here but cannot find any particular points that relate to this type of behavior. Any advice, questions, or suggestions will be appreciated.

Ciao,

Don

 

[PzIkHo]

You may be overfeeding. Remember that the rule of thumb with small tropical fish is: Generally, their stomachs are the size of their eyeball. Which means that each one can only really eat a few flakes. Plus most fish only really need food once a day, and most are fine with being fed every other day. So they just might not be too hungry.
Also, the darting around early on sounds like stress, and the calming down over the next couple days seems to support that. Remember that transporting fish is pretty stressful business for them. Don't ever be in a rush to acclimate your fish. I've taken two hours to acclimate a fish before.

 

[PESCATORI]

My reply 2 u

Nice to hear from you PzIkHo...Actually I did not expect a reply until sometime tomorrow, what a treat. Well! your probably correct, especially when you point out the size of their stomachs. "A very few small flakes-is all it takes." Thank you for your advice.

Ciao,

Don

 

[jasurf21]

I agree with the over-feeding. Tetra's are very weak also that's why I buy them when they are on sale for $1 each because they are very easily lost.

 

[BigJim]

The LFS only feeds the fish enough to keep them sellable.