Overfeeding?

D

Darby

In talking to people, I think that I may be overfeeding my fishos (namely a yellow tail damsel and a royal gramma). I give them a small pinch of fortified dried shrimp before heading off to work, and when I get home I give them some baby brine shrimp, then another small pinch or either the dried brine or some frozen prep.
I tried to feed them eevery other day, but they got pretty dang aggressive with eachother, and my mandarin and crabs.
How much is too much?
 
I agree on the, ?higher protein foods such as Mysis? or even better meaty dense seafood like shrimp, squid, Silversides. Brine shrimp should rarely be offered for anything other that to trick picky eaters into taking more nutritious foods. Even then the brine should be gut loaded.

However, I think there is a slight misconception in this hobby with the term, ?Overfeeding?. IMO it is nearly impossible to actually over feed a fish. Most fish swim or move continuously. That is they are rarely completely still even during the night cycle. Fish have fast metabolisms and seldom suffer from the same maladies that occur when humans overeat, or even other pets. Sure, a dog or cat can become dangerously obese, but I don?t think a fish can ever be overweight.

The problem is not feeding the fish too much, but rather putting more food in the tank than the fish can consume before it goes bad. So what we?re talking here is actually overfeeding the tank , or the bio system, and not necessarily the fish.

I once read a post by Tri, or perhaps it was Phillip back when I first joined the club that comes to mind. He/they admitted to overfeeding, but felt that if one had enough live rock and Crew it really didn?t matter. I believe there is a lot of truth to this. If you keep a very healthy bio-filter, with tons of quality LR, LS with a healthy growth of macros for nitrate export, with aggressive skimming and most importantly a large effective cleaner crew, I think it?s pretty hard to overfeed. My fish are exposed to food all day long. That is I keep fresh, meaty foods hanging in the tank almost continuously while the lights are on, and I never have any water quality issues. My prams for all four tanks are always 0-0<5 I run carbon 24/7, do a monthly 5 gallon water change per tank, and I never leave uneaten food in the tank overnight.
 
Just try either a pufferfish or a koi... They will probably do the pidgeon-like suicide of eating so much their stomach explodes. My little puffer has actually scared me at times when I accidentally add too many live brines at once, his stomach just expands soooo much! Crazy crazy.
 
I am a strong believer in overfeeding the fish. I see that in the natural sea, the tangs eat constantly. Feeding once a day would cause a lot of agression in my tank. As long as you do water change, I don't see any problems over feeding.

By the way, I don't disagreed with the folks above. I just like my tangs to be fat.
 
Thanks y'all. I try to clean out the sponge filter twice a week, and there is always a littl food sitting on the surface of it. Perhaps I should turn off my filter while feeding...
I try to jsut use the brine as "treats", but I'll for sure get some mysis to chop up real fine.
 
Darby. I just noticed that in your sig it says you have a 24 gallon Nano. I?m not sure if that was there before or I just didn?t notice it before giving out all that ponderous advise. If you notice in Tri?s sig he has a slightly larger water volume to play with. :roll: You should be careful putting too much prepared foods into that small of a water volume, especially flake. You might look into trying my idea on hanging meaty food on algae clips. This is a good way to expose your fish to food all day without polluting you tank.


Just didn?t want to stir you in the wrong direction
 
What kind of meaty foods would you suggest? Just about everything I've seen tends to tear off and float around, which would pretty much be just like the regular feeding...
 
In the wild fish supposedly eat every day and ignore food when they are not hungry. Seems like we should keep to the same schedule.

This site lists the types of food different fish eat: http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/foodssupplies/l/bl_whatfisheat.htm.
 
Darby: The differences is, the little pieces of food left over from hanging the meaty sources are easier to see and clean up, whereas uneaten flake food just turns into a nutrient soup, that even crabs and snails can dispose of. The best foods for hanging are fresh squid, and/or table shrimp, (like people eat) these foods are pretty tough and stay together well in an algae clip, and if the clip is on a string it is easily retrieved. This way the fish can nibble all day at their leisure without making such a mess. You can buy these foods in the seafood section of any grocery store, and it is really cheap. A bag of shrimp and squid will last a long time in the freezer. Almost any fish can be trained to eat this way, except FireFish, for some reason. I have never been able to get them to eat from a clip. But if you start training your fish to eat this way, especially from the QT tank, they seem to learn from one another. Also, getting all your fish to respond to a specific spot to feed gives you a good chance to get a close look at everyone to check for parasites, and count heads.

However, I guess its not too hard to count heads in a nano :wink:
 
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