Will Fish Starve if you Don't Feed Them?

[DavyKOTWF]

Will they starve and die if you go 2 or 3 days without feeding?

I keep reading 'don't overfeed?' so wondering if you can skip days and if it actually might be healthy to do this?

 

[Simon_DG]

About what kind of fish are we talking?
It depends if u have a verry plant tank lats say thats been running for a year or more then ur fish could probebly eat things like algea etc but i would still feed ur fish daily just make sure that everything gets eaten that u give them i feed my fish every evening and in the weekends 2 times when im home

 

[DavyKOTWF]

My 20g tank is very new. Talking about goldfish, Siamese F. fish, looking to get
cherry barb, paradise fish, tetra, black molly, albino guppy, cichlid.

No live plants yet; the shop owner said my newly placed gravel had no nutrients, thus I shouldn't have live plants yet.

 

[SaraB]

Do you have both a goldfish and betta already? Or are those on the list of things you're considering?

 

[Simon_DG]

Golfish doesent need a heater the other fish do if the tank is new with that many fish do lots of water changes

 

[King Fisher]

Fish can easily go a week without food if you had to leave town or something.

You should skip a day of feeding every week for health/digestive purposes. It's a good practice.

 

[DavyKOTWF]

Thanks all.
GF and Betta were the first two I got. Going to stick with them, in spite of their reputations.
Got to Petco today and that list above went 80% out the window. Got 2 Panda Molly, a Dalmation Molly (they had NO Black Mollies), some Albino fish and some blue silver dollar looking fish. Oh yeah, and two Neon Tetras.

Skip a day of feeding - thanks King Fisher, that makes sense to me.

 

[rlederer]

I've heard that skipping a feeding day is good for the fish, but I have never seen any evidence that that is true. Anyone have any real solid information to verify that? Sure, you can skip a day or two or three. You can also fast yourself for three days. But healthy? I doubt it.

 

[SaraB]

Not to sound mean but your stocking is way off. Goldfish are better off in coldwater while everything else needs warm water. It will either get huge and eat your other fish or be stunted and have a much shorter lifespan.

You can't keep guppies with betta, they will fight.
Silver dollar looking fish, maybe a blue dwarf gourami? Those also can't be kept with bettas. Silver dollars get way too big for a 20 gallon tank.
Neons need to be kept in schools of around 6.
Also adding too many fish all at once can cause problems.

 

[Laser]

I've heard that skipping a feeding day is good for the fish, but I have never seen any evidence that that is true. Anyone have any real solid information to verify that? Sure, you can skip a day or two or three. You can also fast yourself for three days. But healthy? I doubt it.

I've heard that this is a common practice for bettas to keep them from getting constipated. I do it for mine but I've never seen any hard evidence that it helps.

 

[earhtmother]

I have always skipped a day of feeding except in my fry tank and nobody seems bothered by it.
Goldfish are cold watet fish and Betta need 83f so not a good mix AT ALL before even considering the size a single Goldfish can get

 

[Simon_DG]

If the fish tank is new there isent much food so wouldent go more than 2 days without feeding personly

 

[King Fisher]

Fish are different than humans. There's plenty of literature out on this if one wanted to know more about it.

 

[King Fisher]

I've heard that skipping a feeding day is good for the fish, but I have never seen any evidence that that is true. Anyone have any real solid information to verify that? Sure, you can skip a day or two or three. You can also fast yourself for three days. But healthy? I doubt it.

There's plenty of literature on it if one wished to learn about it. Fish aren't humans.

 

[BigNorsk]

With some of my fish in some of my tanks it is hard to get them to eat food I add because they are not overstocked and are feedinG off the tank.

Being able to go a few daysvwithout added food should be fine if the fish is in good condition.

If full of tapeworms or other parasites, as more than a few are, my answer would be different because the fish is starving while being fed every day.

Your fish will tell you if you pay attention to them.

 

[sterfri99]

My 20g tank is very new. Talking about goldfish, Siamese F. fish, looking to get
cherry barb, paradise fish, tetra, black molly, albino guppy, cichlid.

No live plants yet; the shop owner said my newly placed gravel had no nutrients, thus I shouldn't have live plants yet.

I'm not trying to come across as a prick, but I'll add to what the others have said.

This is a bad combination of fish. Bettas (siamese fighting fish) rarely do well in freshwater communities. It's been done (I've done it), but it's completely dependant on the betta's personality. Some will be okay with other colorful fish in the tank, the majority will not. Goldfish generally shouldn't be kept with freshwater fish, and don't do well in 20 gallons. They'll outgrow that pretty quick. They also like colder water than all the other fish. Never put cichlids in with freshwater communities. There are some exceptions (eg angelfish or some rams), but you need to do some research on which cichlids are least likely to kill everything else.

NEVER put gouramis and bettas together. Bettas and paradise fish are gouramis and they're gonna be very territorial.

As for an ideal setup, a paradise fish, barbs, tetras, molly, and guppy are gonna be pretty compatible. I'd go with that, and just leave the goldfish, betta, and cichlid for other tanks.

If you find plants that most of their nutrients from the water column (eg duckweed, mosses, hornwoort, crypts) then the newness of the tank won't be a problem as long as you're adding liquid fertilizer weekly or twice-weekly. The nutrients that are in your gravel are largely the same nutrients found in your water column. For plants the get the majority of their nutrients from the roots, some root tabs will help quite a bit.

 

[rlederer]

I asked for evidence that skipping a feeding day is healthy for fish. I have checked the scientific literature and see no evidence for this practice. I see lots of aquarium sites that repeat the the idea of skipping a day, but where is the actual evidence?
There are some scientific studies that show that young fish in aquaculture do best being fed 3 times a day every day. Another study shows that fish have circadian rhythms, just like we do, and their hormones and digestive juices increase and decrease in anticipation of being fed. So by skipping a day feeding all you are doing is messing with a fish's hormonal and digestive system. Sure, you can do it if you have to leave town, but to do it because "it is healthy" ? Nope. It's not.

 

[Autumnsky]

No the fish will not starve if you do not feed and established and mature tank (and properly sized tank for the stock within) for 2-3 days.

If the question is because you plan to go out of town for a long weekend, is slightly different than if you plan to not feed the fish every week by skipping 2-3 days of feeding for "their health".

There are so many variables. A mature tank means there are micro foods growing all over the tank inside because of time. Meaning that their might be a bit of grazing they could do if there wasn't an outside food source - you feeding them.

Established / stable meaning that there is a good and stable colony of BB to help there be no other problems to worry about by being away from the tank.

Properly sized tank and stocked for the size of the aquarium.

GF internal food processing system really means they should be grazing throughout the day. In a natural setting there would be algae and plants for the GF to snack on in addition to larva, worms, and bugs landing in the water, frog eggs, what have you...

Consider that fish in an aquarium live a different life than one in a natural environment. As their care takers we should try to help them by feeding a varied diet and keep water as good as can be since they can't just swim to another location for a new food source or better water.

Over feeding just can lead to other problems if the water isn't changed enough. I do not know of a good reason to intentionally starve your fish. Not saying that fasting is bad though. Fish have times in nature when there isn't necessarily a plentiful food source.

If one looks at breeders growing strong healthy fish, they are given ample amounts of food and large changes and freshening of water to rid it of waste and hormones and less chances of diseases setting in.

Baby fish have a different needs as well as young actively growing fish.

Hoping some basic there can help you (and others) make good decisions and choices for fish keeping. My fish seem to love eating several times a day and if I feed them that way, I try and take a normal days rations and divide it by how many times I might feed them.

 

[Caliban07]

I asked for evidence that skipping a feeding day is healthy for fish. I have checked the scientific literature and see no evidence for this practice. I see lots of aquarium sites that repeat the the idea of skipping a day, but where is the actual evidence?

There are some scientific studies that show that young fish in aquaculture do best being fed 3 times a day every day. Another study shows that fish have circadian rhythms, just like we do, and their hormones and digestive juices increase and decrease in anticipation of being fed. So by skipping a day feeding all you are doing is messing with a fish's hormonal and digestive system. Sure, you can do it if you have to leave town, but to do it because "it is healthy" ? Nope. It's not.

I’m not sure about that. Skipping feeding for healthy fish also doesn’t quite make sense to me either. Most the fish we keep are nothing more than plankton pickers. They get fed a lot as it is. 3 days seems too excessive to me and if you have a heavily planted to in theory one small feed a day should be fine. I tend to throw in a bit extra for my shrimp and snails.

 

[BigNorsk]

I asked for evidence that skipping a feeding day is healthy for fish. I have checked the scientific literature and see no evidence for this practice. I see lots of aquarium sites that repeat the the idea of skipping a day, but where is the actual evidence?
There are some scientific studies that show that young fish in aquaculture do best being fed 3 times a day every day. Another study shows that fish have circadian rhythms, just like we do, and their hormones and digestive juices increase and decrease in anticipation of being fed. So by skipping a day feeding all you are doing is messing with a fish's hormonal and digestive system. Sure, you can do it if you have to leave town, but to do it because "it is healthy" ? Nope. It's not.

I would think instead of trying to take over someone else's thread, putting that as its own new thread would be much more likely to get responses.