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Re: Feeding time



on 30/11/99 10:14 am, Joo Tan at zoologist at mailcity_com wrote:

> As for tetras, I think twice or once a week is too little.  I feed my tetras
> once a day and get to fast on Sunday.  They are doing fine.

I think for us keeping planted tanks, feeding is actually a big issue. IMHO,
most of us simply overfeed, not realising that we're literally adding
phosphorus to our tanks. Isn't that contrary to what we want to achieve in a
planted tank? 

I have a heavily planted 4-foot tank that is moderately stocked with 130
plus fish, virtually all of them tetras from the axelrodi's to the simulans
armstrongi's and a few species of hysebberon (or something like that). They
are fed extremely sparingly, at most twice a week, with either frozen
bloodworm or daphnia (for the smaller simulans).

Occasionally I go for weekly holidays, when no-one feeds the fish. The
longest sojourn I had was for two entire weeks with no food. I prepared the
fish for this long fast by feeding them very very little, but every single
day. Suffice to say, when I returned, I don't believe I lost a single fish,
and this fish looked in fine fettle, with bright colours and normal
respiration and all.

The tank is extremely clean and algae-free and the single Fluval is cleaned
only when the output water slows to a crawl.

I have kept tetras from half-inch size to normal healthy adult specimens of
about 1.5 inches (some bigger still!) using this regime.

For me, I always think of how the fish would perform in the wild. Would it
get food twice a day? Would they get food everyday? I reckon not. So the
only ones that survive are the toughest ones. In our tanks, even with my
spare feeding regime, even the runts survive! I have one cardinal, for
instance, with a bent back every since he was a little half-incher! Today,
he competes with the other fitter fish without problems.

Think about it. By feeding our fish too much, we may be inadvertently
feeding our algae blooms.
 
> For juvenile fishes, best to feed them regularly.  For my young discuses, I
> feed them 3 times a day.  Less feeding will retard their growth.

This I agree with. 


Mark Pan
-- 
It is far better to do the right thing than to just do things right.