Do you enjoy feeding your fish to a fault?

[blennielove]

I LOVE to feed my fish. I love to feed everyone's fish. I go to my LFS and as I walk the isles, I feed their fish. With that said, I do not "over feed" them. I will only feed a few pellets at a time, watching how the particular fish goes after the food, and enjoying the interaction with the fish.
I love feeding them and thank goodness, I also love changing their water...but that is another story.

 

[pookstreet]

Great topic! I for one believe that keeping the fish well fed enables one to keep those that are less "reef safe" in a reef tank. So far, my nippers have "nipped" but have not consumed corals as a food source. The nippers will continue to do that because there is only so much you can do to curtail natural behavior.

Since we are talking about feeding, how about we define what exactly "feed x number of times" mean. Do you feed an x number of times only when the lights come on separate by a certain amount of time in between? Or do you feed even with the lights off? For example, my lights start coming on around 5 p.m. and the last goes off at 5 a.m. in the morning. I won't be feeding from around midnight on for the obvious reasons. So that leaves me a roughly 7 hour window where the fish are active and swimming about. When the lights go off, it's dark and I usually only see the naso swimming around. I would prep the foods once and feed throughout that period. For me, it's not so much how many times I feed the tank but the overall amount that is used.

 

[SDguy]

Good question. I work very early, so the fish are still sleeping when I leave for work. This means they don't eat until around 3:30pm at the earliest. While my lights don't come on until noon, the fish are obviously awake and active well before that. I will then feed them about 5 or so times until lights out at 9pm. They are defnitely "full" by then (ie not really interested in food).

I have also noticed on weekends, when I am home, that if I try feeding my fish in the morning, especially the FO fish, they aren't that interested...

 

[aquaph8]

?What do you do when you have that one fish that gets more than his share and just keeps getting fatter and fatter. My Lamarks is starting to look like a balloon but I dont want to deprive the whole tank cause one fish is a blimp.

 

[bradleyj]

I'll chime in. I feed usually 3-5 times a day, usually right after work, which is around 4pm. I only feed spectrum pellets or some flake food during the day and then at dinner, I'll feed them 4 cubes of frozen food, which will be a mixture of emerald entree, hikari mysis, spirulina brine, pe mysis, . Keeps them fat and healthy, plus, like Kenny said, it keeps there mind off the coral.

 

[bradleyj]

Try spreading the food throughout the tank so that one fish cant get at it all. I feed mine right in front of my mp40, that way it is spread all over.

 

[btkrausen]

Try spreading the food throughout the tank so that one fish cant get at it all. I feed mine right in front of my mp40, that way it is spread all over.

Exactly what I do. They all jump to it when its first in but the MP40 spreads it across the tank quickly.

I try to feed a wide variety including Rods (which is a variety in itself), spirulina brine, pe mysis, and NLS. I also use multiple types of nori including Rods Reef branded, SeaVeggies (both green and red) and then nori from the asian market.

 

[humaguy]

I too feed 3-5 times a day...though when I have baby trigs and baby angels- which is what I mainly keep, I up it to like 6-8 times per day...

 

[humaguy]

I too feed 3-5 times a day...though when I have baby trigs and baby angels- which is what I mainly keep, I up it to like 6-8 times per day...keeping them well fed and happy also keeps them from bothering each other...