Question on feeding.

[JamesMJ2]

I want to make sure my fish are getting well fed. I feed them once a day probably about an 1/8 of a teaspoon of Tetra Flake and Bio-Blend. How do give them a varied diet? Whats the best way? They get Bloodworms as a treat maybe every two weeks. Sometimes I toss in an Algea waffer or sinking waffer.(Hikari) Just as a note.. The Bio-Blend is great food, but the little pellets sink way to fast. Which sucks.. my loaches have the biggest bellies.

 

[TankGirl]

What I do is have some freeze-dried bloodworms on hand, and frozen as well, and alternate between these and various flake and pelleted foods on a daily basis. Just about every feed they have a different thing, with a treat of live brine shrimp about once a week or so. The pleco will probably enjoy the wafer but sometimes they ignore them, so check to see if it is getting eaten. I agree, the BioBlend sink way to fast for me so I use them for my cory cats. I use Omega One veggie flake, Hikari Micro pellets, bloodworms and other various Hikari frozen foods like shrimp and tubifex. I think it is much easier to overfeed and create problems than to cause problems by a limited diet. If you are feeding a quality flake then they could have it every day and live happy healthy lives, but it does help them to keep it varied. To avoid overfeeding, don't feed more, just a different thing every time.

 

[LondonGman]

Chuck in a "leaf" of lettuce or a slice of cucumber now and them for extra variety. If you can get the slice of cucumber upright, they will eat a hole out of the middle. Cool.

 

[JamesMJ2]

So really when the say "very your fishes diet" they mean feed them different flake foods. I do have frozen chicken innards I have been meaning to try, but I am afraid of what that might leave in the tank. Well thanks for the info guys I appreciate it.

 

[Alivymar]

I take a "varied diet" to mean not the same thing every day. I have quite a fish food collection LOL and my guys get: Bio-Blend (my loaches also lurve em; so do the angelfish and they ALL look like mr creosote afterwards LOL), OmegaOne flakes, Hikari Algae wafers, Hikari Tropical sinking wafers, Freeze dried bloodworms, Spectrum pellets, shrimp pellets, frozen bloodworm and the occasional bit of zucchini. I usually feed one sinking and one floating food at a time, and they get fed twice a day.

I'd pass on the chicken innards. I agree; would probably mess with the water.

 

[Scottw68TN]

Alivymar I see your an apprentice Again?

 

[tkos]

James:

You are soon going to need a mucb bigger tank there. Pretty much all of your fish get huge. The pleco gets 2 feet long, the clown loaches 8 inches, the gold gouramis get big and angle get really tall. Your looking at enough adult fish to fill a 100 gallon easy.

 

[Allivymar]

Naw, I'm a dork Scott LOL The one "L" nick is my backup nick from when I messed up my email a while back (I needed a new logon to let the admins know what the prob was; can't msg em without being logged in and I couldn't log in the Allivymar nick LOL). If I'm not paying attention...like, oh, when I first get up in the morn, I'll occasionally misspell my nick *grin*

 

[JamesMJ2]

Tell me about it Tkos. I actually have the 46gal tank all ready to rock. This weekend I am putting the stand together, but it will take me a week to stain it and put a finish on it. It's a little too cozy in my tank, but they all seem to get along luckily.

 

[tkos]

Cool. I would move those swords as well. I have 1 in a 10 gallon and it is taking over big time. Yikes!!!

 

[Scottw68TN]

Yeah I noticed the 1 L. By the way congrats on the admin.

 

[JamesMJ2]

Argh... See mine are faultering for some reason. I have three. 2 little tiny ones, and 1 medium one. I will admit I am with out a light ATM but even when I had a PC lamp on there they wouldn't grow. I have some pics...

 

[tkos]

Wow. Mine was a little slow at first but has since taken off crazy. Perhaps your are busy growing roots right now. They do like high light so that might be a problem, also you might want to add some fertilizer or root tabs. Swords generally like older tanks that have a waste buildup or else a soil instead of gravel.

 

[JamesMJ2]

It's probably the light then. Even when I had a good PC light it was only 2watts per gallon, which is considered low light. I have root tabs, fertz, and CO2. Got a good bio load as well, so there is plenty of muck.