I recently took all of my fish (#*$& livebearers!!!) except for my betta to a pet store and gave them to them. I bought a pair of powder blue dwarf gourami and a little pleco. That brings my total up to 4 fish. All of the fish are about 1 1/2 to 2 inches long.
Before, I had almost 30 fish. (have I said #*&# livebearers yet?)
I have no idea now that I have so few fish… how much food should I be feeding them? (I use flakes btw.)
The best way to judge how much to feed your fish is by time. The fish should eat all the food in about 3-4 minutes. (If you completely cleaned out the tank, they should eat it all in about 1 minute). Any excess food should be scoped out and not allowed to rot.
It’s better if you can feed them several times a day and mix up their food.
Also, when your pleco gets bigger, it might be a good idea to throw a sinking pellet in for him. They eat algae but eventually he’ll get so big he won’t be able to survive on just that.
my fish don’t always notice when I feed them… so they don’t come eat it right away.
My very basic rule of thumb is you’re overfeeding if food is falling to the gravel.
Then you’re probably feeding them too often. Try once when you wake up and once in the evening before you turn off their hood light. They need a chance to get hungry between feedings. This also means they’ll pick more at the bits in the gravel during the day, which translates into less cleaning for you in the long run.
I have a blue g. also, a pleco, three tetras and three barbs. They only eat a pinch twice a day. Every few days I’ll squeeze in some bloodworms as a treat, and the pleco gets a sinker at those times as well.
I have a tank of Cichlids and I only feed them once every other day. Amount? – they finish off the food in 2-3 minutes.
They seem perfectly happy (though I’m not quite sure how I’d be able to tell if they weren’t). I’ve had this tank for about 20 years and my fish seem to live longer now than they did when I followed the standard guideline to feed them small amounts multiple times a day.
One conclusion I’ve come to is that while it is easy to overfeed fish, it is hard to underfeed them.
We feed our goldfish every other day. I don’t pay any attention to how quickly he eats it, though, I just throw in in there and he does his thing.
Well that would be twice as often as I feed them now, which is once when I wake up. I have 4 fish, and I usually put in enough so they can each eat 3-4 flakes. I’m just worried that isn’t enough… but they don’t act hungry so I just don’t know!
I think you’re fine. As I mentioned, it’s really hard to underfeed these critters.