Feed training.

[mpyers]

So i see where people train their fish to eat a certain thing or a certain place in the tank or a certain food. I feel like im clueless to this. I feel like my fish are training me where they want their food.

How do you go about training? What are the purposes/advantages? I'm sure its different for every fish so i have two clowns and a hippo tang. What (if anything) should i do for them. They eat fine. But they're wasteful. And in general what foods are best? Shower me with information. Im on this forum 24/7 and still cant get enough knowledge.

Also i have a mandarin goby. But thats a whole different ball game so im not worried about that on this thread. He gets his own.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I feed a huge variety of foods to my tank. Everything from frozen to liquid including flakes, granular, coral food and some additives... and even fresh caught and quick frozen by me.

I mix it all up in a big beer mug with some tank water until it's all thawed and saturated so it doesn't float. Then I turn off the pumps and powerheads and let the tank come to rest. I take a turkey baster and suck up food and spray it all over the tank. I make a point of spraying some at certain corals and my anemones, but in general it just goes everywhere. After 10 minutes the pumps start back up for just 30 seconds and turn off for another 10 minutes. This stirs up a lot of the food that has settled on the rocks and sand. When the pumps come back on the 2nd time there isn't much if any food left in the water. And just as a side note, I have a LOT of water movement in the tank so food doesn't sit around much in the tank. And I have a lot of CUC (2 serpent stars, 3 emerald crabs, a few various kinds of snails, a yellow sand sifting sea cucumber, a pink filter feeding sea cucumber, a few small clams, a flame scallop, a lot of small feather dusters, a cleaner shrimp, 2 peppermint shrimp, a few small pistol shrimp, a handful of porcelain crabs a few bristle worms and probably more that I don't even know about!). But my tank isn't about corals or fish or even both... it's about being ALIVE with life.

Train my fish where to eat? LOL! When I walk back and forth in front of the tank at feeding time, all the fish follow me from one end to the other, back and forth. I tell people I'm 'walking' my fish, or that I'm giving them their daily exercise!

 

[scooter31707]

In my case, I always go to the same spot of the tank to put the food in. I guess my fish realize that's where the food will be coming from. So now everytime I come to the tank they go straight to that 1 spot, thinking food is coming. I also run 2 auto feeders and they have learn the sound of it when it is getting ready to release the food and they fly over there waiting for the food to hit the water. It's pretty cool to watch.

 

[mpyers]

Currently i drop in a few pellets at a time until they're not interested. Should i be doing something different? Is that too much? Or is it OK?

 

[scooter31707]

What are they eating besides the pellets? Keep trying the pellets. I like the New Life Spectrum pellets,

 

[Sk8r]

'Fish training' ===no, ain't no such. BUT if you habitually feed at one spot, and maybe mix in something more delectable, you get fish that WILL follow you to that spot. [SOme fish are brighter than others.] Hint: 2 drops of Selcon (into a 50 gallon---if you have a nano, use Selcon on a toothpick) preceding food. This seems to whet appetites and get attention to the desired spot.
Getting mandys to use a feeder? No. Not so much. They generally don't, and die, if they have an insufficiency of proper copepod production in the tank.
Getting tangs to eat nori---well, don't feed them mysis all the time. It's like kids---if you serve turnip greens but let them have chocolate, the turnip greens will generally not be the first choice.

 

[xCry0x]

One thing I read when trying to transition fish off frozen to prepared (pellets) is to mix pellets w/ the frozen.

Have no clue if it actually makes a difference because I didn't try to feed pellets long before mixing them w/ frozen. Who knows, but first time I mixed pellets into the mysis cup the wrasses ate the pellets and started eating them from then on.

Fish took to flake right off the bat - which surprised me.

Personally, wanted to move to flake/pellet from primarily frozen to ensure better nutrient profile and also to keep the tank a bit cleaner.

 

[ClownFishGuy6]

A flake food would be fine for the clownfish. But for the hippo tang get some dried seaweed and put it on a veggie clip and just let it sit in your tank. After 24 houses of it being in there remove it so it doesn't get excess food into the tank and raise your algae

 

[mpyers]

How many times a day should I feed?

 

[Capsle]

Feed training.

For my tang I place a 2x2" piece of nori (bought from the grocery store) on a magnetic clip I made every day.

I also feed my 2 clowns and Anthias twice a day a mix of frozen mysis and brime shrimp. A piece about 1/2 X 1/2".

I place the thawed mixture in a net, rinse it off under tap water and then just hold the net infront of my gyre.

2-3 times a week I'll spot feed my anemones a piece of thawed shrimp. And I'll spot feed my corals, only as of this week.

Should I be stopping my pumps when I feed? I figure it gives the fish some exercise lol.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jeff4777]

How many times a day should I feed?

That will vary greatly depending on the fish you have. With Tangs and Anthias I feed by hand about 3 days a day, all kinds of food. Also my auto feeder goes off 4 times a day. (It doesn't dump in a lot, just a nice supplement or base line feeding point.)

 

[Cancun]

Hi! I don't know if my fish are trained or not..but I use a round food defroster in my aquarium. It is held in place by a strong magnet. When it gets close to feeding time all my fish...especially the wrasses go and hang out by the defroster. So when I put my cube of PE Mysis....they are ready to eat...they have even got so excited they knocked it down one time before I even put the food in there!! LOL!