Neptune Aquatics

How often do you feed??

goldielocke76

Supporting Member
Ok, so, the LFS that I normally go to usually gives decent advice. Thus being said, I was advised to only feed frozen food as a "treat" or once every 2-3 days to help keep phosphates down. I was feeding once a day, with vitamin enriched food. But then, without thinking, I decided to follow said advice. Well, after tonight, I am having second thoughts. Keep in mind they still get a variety of pellets during the day off an auto feeder. I can name a list if you want, but it's rather long and I should get going to bed because I have to work at 4:30am. PM me if you really want to know LOL.

I have NEVER had a problem with my fish getting along! **knocks on wood** However, as of late, I've been noticing a change in their behavior that's only recently started. My midas blenny was in the overflow as of last night, and it was a b*tch to get him out. After getting him out, I saw that he was being chased by other fish. My tang has been chasing the clowns over the frogspawn territory, and my angel has just been....weird....

My preparation for the frozen food is follows: thaw food out in RODI water (usually a mix of spirulina brine, mysis, extruded krill, and mega marine all together), rinse again, drain it using a tea strainer (I bought it specifically for this purpose) add a half pill of crushed up beta glucan, put some brightwells garlic guard on the food, some selcon, some vita chem and some vitamin c concentrate that I got from the brightwell guy at RAP. Only a few drops of each. Let it sit 15-20 minutes, then put 1/4 teaspoon in the tank, put the food bowl in a plastic bag, remove the air, and sit the rest of it in the fridge.

Also do about 15-20% water changes once a week, but since I have been only doing pellet food, I have been doing 30% every other week.

So, enough of my griping. My question is, how often do you feed your tank frozen? I was doing 1/4 teaspoon, once a day, usually at night, after them being fed during the day by pellets by autofeeder. Seemed to work out just fine, every one was happy and healthy. Also did nori in the tank every 2 days or so.

Yes, I know my fish are very well fed. I love happy, healthy fish. I didn't spend $$$$$ just to put them in a tank and be miserable, fighting with each other, and hungry all the time. And I don't over feed! I really watch as to how much of pellets go in the tank at what time of day, and how much frozen I feed. I have puffers, so I am also very aware of water quality, as well as the utmost importance of a varied diet. In fact, the more I continue to type, the more I am convinced that it is the lack of meaty foods in the diet, but I am still curious how often everyone else feeds, how much, when, etc. Any word of advice or anything, would be cool. Have a good night guys!
 
RHF wrote an article in AA about PO4 in aquarium food, definitely worth a read!
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry

Takeaway:
Dry and frozen foods vary substantially in phosphorus to protein content. There are high and low phosphorus foods in both categories. On balance, one could not say from this data that typical dry foods are any worse in this regard than are typical frozen foods.
 
You have seen my fish...
I feed them via auto feeder (4x/day) and daily frozen food mix.
Feed your fish well and often. They spend lots of energy swimming.
A hungry fish is an angry fish!
 
I feed dry flakes 2X per day on auto feeder, and frozen every night.
+1 on well fed fish = happy friendly fish.
On the other hand, I do have to deal with phosphate removal.
GFO, water changes, less fish (thus less food needed), and different food, are all options.

PS : That linked article was very informative.
 
Auto feeder 3x a day (mix of New Life pellets, Omega One kelp pellets, Cyclopeeze/spirulina flakes), frozen at night ( mix of Rods Food, mysis shrimp, emerald entree, krill), & some nori daily for tangs.

A fat fish is a happy fish.
 
Thanks guys, that's what I thought. I don't know what I was thinking when I just started to do instead of stop, think, and then act. Ugh, I chalk it up to a moment of temporary insanity. Now I feel like a dunce. The only one who's well fed in the tank is the mandarin LoL!

And I even planned on getting a GFO up and running; just haven't done it yet. -____- le sigh. Moment of temporary insanity.

Thanks David for the read!

Thank you all for your input. :)
 
What's the trick with auto feeders? I have mine dump into a round cup so that it doesn't get sucked over the overflow but eventually sinks, unfortunately the foxface figured it out and goes right up to it and eats it from the surface before it gets a chance to sink in.
 
sfsuphysics said:
What's the trick with auto feeders? I have mine dump into a round cup so that it doesn't get sucked over the overflow but eventually sinks, unfortunately the foxface figured it out and goes right up to it and eats it from the surface before it gets a chance to sink in.

I have something similar with a pipe. And I have a foxface that does the same thing.
Tricks:
1 : I put that right in front of a power head. So as things sink, they get blown around very quickly.
2 : Dump enough food there at once, so that others get some as well.
So instead of 4X per day, 2X per day with 2X the food. Pros/Cons with that of course.
3 : Different types of food. My Foxface will ignore red flakes if there are green ones at the same time.
 
sfsuphysics said:
What's the trick with auto feeders? I have mine dump into a round cup so that it doesn't get sucked over the overflow but eventually sinks, unfortunately the foxface figured it out and goes right up to it and eats it from the surface before it gets a chance to sink in.

LoL, Mike, I am sitting here asking myself the same question!!! I keep screwing my ehiem up, either that or I feel like I have the worst luck with fish tank equipment EVER. My first one stopped working, now my second's cup was warped by the damn metal halides, dumping almost a full teaspoon of food in at once. No thank you. I just got a handle on my nitrate issues-- I don't need over feeding! I put my feeder on the brace bar of the tank; the flow from the return gives it a good push from the overflow and it goes into the middle of the tank which is kind of like no mans land, so no one really gets upset.

I feed a mix of cyclopeeze, NLS (small fish formula and marine fish formula), Sustainable Aquatics pellets (the clowns love it), Otohime C1 and C2, and Formula 2 small pellets. Let me tell you, I have gotten the best coloring ever with the TDO and all the fish love it. The tangs tend to favor the NLS marine formula and the formula two, the clowns enjoy the SA brand, and my blennies like the small fish formula and the cyclopeeze. When the auto feeder feeds, I have it doing 4 times a day (2:30, 5:30, 8:30 and 11:30) and I have it do twice, but I do smaller amounts to make sure most of the food doesn't go in the overflow. Fish get smart, lol they know where I keep the feeder and are all swimming in there waiting for it to drop.

I only feed Hikari brand frozen. I have some Ocean nutrition too, but that's more of the veggies for the tangs, and I have the green, purple and red seaweeds for the tangs, but they seem to favor the red the best.

Sorry guys, I can talk food all day long. I love finding new types of food for my fish. I love giving them the most variety that I can. I think I have found more varieties from talking with people than I would have on my own.

My only problem with feeding is my firefish and my sleeper striped goby. All three of them know exactly where to be at the right times and I am afraid that they will eat too much. Sleeper's named Pig. LoL.
 
gimmito said:
A fat fish is a happy fish.

Like humans, a fat fish may be happy, but 9 out 10 its not healthy. Having said that, most hobbyists are starving their fish. Just watch the fat from things like squid, feed those sparingly.

I have never understood why hobbyists use RODI to prep their food. Washing a saltwater animal in freshwater is not advisable, nor is saltwater flesh sitting in freshwater for any real period of time. I won't do it for the stuff I eat, so I'll never do it for what my animals eat. Just like I don't eat rancid food and don't feed it to animals under my care.
 
BAYMAC said:
Like humans, a fat fish may be happy, but 9 out 10 its not healthy. Having said that, most hobbyists are starving their fish. Just watch the fat from things like squid, feed those sparingly.
Yeah, I didn't really think a FAT fish is actually a healthy fish either... of course, I think Jim was probably just exaggerating, LoL.
BAYMAC said:
I have never understood why hobbyists use RODI to prep their food. Washing a saltwater animal in freshwater is not advisable, nor is saltwater flesh sitting in freshwater for any real period of time. I won't do it for the stuff I eat, so I'll never do it for what my animals eat. Just like I don't eat rancid food and don't feed it to animals under my care.
I guess RODI is used because it's "cleaner" than rinsing frozen food with tap water. I'm sure it doesn't really matter what's used since it's such a small amount if you're using a strainer of some sort. Also, since frozen food is typically packaged in frozen cubes, isn't it already safe to assume that they're packaged and good to drop in the tank directly unless you decide that you want to soak your food in supplements.
 
BAYMAC said:
rygh said:
3 : Different types of food. My Foxface will ignore red flakes if there are green ones at the same time.

Don't fish have a harder time seeing red?

Perhaps. But all he needs to do is differentiate it from the green.
And it is not a pure deep red wavelength like an LED would produce, that might be invisible.
 
denzil said:
BAYMAC said:
Like humans, a fat fish may be happy, but 9 out 10 its not healthy. Having said that, most hobbyists are starving their fish. Just watch the fat from things like squid, feed those sparingly.
Yeah, I didn't really think a FAT fish is actually a healthy fish either... of course, I think Jim was probably just exaggerating, LoL.
BAYMAC said:
I have never understood why hobbyists use RODI to prep their food. Washing a saltwater animal in freshwater is not advisable, nor is saltwater flesh sitting in freshwater for any real period of time. I won't do it for the stuff I eat, so I'll never do it for what my animals eat. Just like I don't eat rancid food and don't feed it to animals under my care.
I guess RODI is used because it's "cleaner" than rinsing frozen food with tap water. I'm sure it doesn't really matter what's used since it's such a small amount if you're using a strainer of some sort. Also, since frozen food is typically packaged in frozen cubes, isn't it already safe to assume that they're packaged and good to drop in the tank directly unless you decide that you want to soak your food in supplements.

Point being on the rinsing in freshwater is osmosis, not the cleanliness of the water you are using or the amount you are using. The action starts as soon as the freshwater touches the saltwater organism. Think of what salt does to a slug, now reverse that and that is what you get when you use freshwater on marine organism. The marine organism will take on freshwater and that will be delivered to a marine fish that then has to deal with the osmotic imbalance it is receiving. As a life long fisherman, ex-deck hand, and not to mention part of my job is R&D on this very area, I'm more acutely aware and concerned about rinsing saltwater source animals in freshwater then most hobbyists. FW Mysis are fine to rinse in FW. We do that. We do not rinse anything else in freshwater though.
 
BAYMAC said:
denzil said:
BAYMAC said:
Like humans, a fat fish may be happy, but 9 out 10 its not healthy. Having said that, most hobbyists are starving their fish. Just watch the fat from things like squid, feed those sparingly.
Yeah, I didn't really think a FAT fish is actually a healthy fish either... of course, I think Jim was probably just exaggerating, LoL.
BAYMAC said:
I have never understood why hobbyists use RODI to prep their food. Washing a saltwater animal in freshwater is not advisable, nor is saltwater flesh sitting in freshwater for any real period of time. I won't do it for the stuff I eat, so I'll never do it for what my animals eat. Just like I don't eat rancid food and don't feed it to animals under my care.
I guess RODI is used because it's "cleaner" than rinsing frozen food with tap water. I'm sure it doesn't really matter what's used since it's such a small amount if you're using a strainer of some sort. Also, since frozen food is typically packaged in frozen cubes, isn't it already safe to assume that they're packaged and good to drop in the tank directly unless you decide that you want to soak your food in supplements.

Point being on the rinsing in freshwater is osmosis, not the cleanliness of the water you are using or the amount you are using. The action starts as soon as the freshwater touches the saltwater organism. Think of what salt does to a slug, now reverse that and that is what you get when you use freshwater on marine organism. The marine organism will take on freshwater and that will be delivered to a marine fish that then has to deal with the osmotic imbalance it is receiving. As a life long fisherman, ex-deck hand, and not to mention part of my job is R&D on this very area, I'm more acutely aware and concerned about rinsing saltwater source animals in freshwater then most hobbyists. FW Mysis are fine to rinse in FW. We do that. We do not rinse anything else in freshwater though.

Hrmm, good to know. Never really thought about that with the fish, although I did learn really quick when it came to target feeding the RBTA and dendro. So do you suggest then letting it sit in a cup of SW, then draining it, rinsing it with SW again, then putting in the vitamins?
 
Back
Top