Over feeding

[sambrinar]

OK this may seem like a stupid question, but here goes.

I am infamous for over feeding in my FW tank. I just put a P Clown and a Wheeler's Watcher gobie in my 12g tank,

I was thinking that a 1/4 cube of frozen food should be enough Right??

The tank is at an office and we are not there on the weekend, so we would feed heavy mon and friday and light tues, thurs.

All the fish recommendations say 2-3 times a day, seems like a lot.

Thanks Brenda

[BigAl07]

The way you feed is to give them what they can effectively eat (eat completely) on say a 4-5 minute period. No food settling to the bottom or floating on the top of the tank.

I too have a tank here in my office... now granted I am an "Under Feeder".

I prepare my food weeks in advance and then freeze it into Ice Cubes that I drop in the tank. I feed on Mon-Wed-Fri and sometimes IF i happen to come in over the weekend I will drop a "food puck" into the tank. My 12 Nano has been running like this for 16 months now with no problem at all and my water quality is pristine!!

[lcstorc]

A lot of it depends on your bio-load and your maintenance. If you have a lot of LR a good skimmer and are wiling to do frequent water changes then you can get away with more than you can without all of that filtration.
I wouldn't feed heavily on Friday. They are going to eat whatever they are going to eat and the rest will just polute the tank. Fish aren't smart enough to know there are 2 days without food ahead so eat more.
I might feed a bit more on Monday but I'm not really sure what I would do. It really depends on how much they eat in a couple of minutes like Al said. I know people who feed frequently small meals and I feed one large meal. My fish beg for more but they are already fat so I think I am doing something right but I also have a lot of equipment and do a lot of water changes.
IMO 1/4 cube is quite a bit for 2 small fish unless they are very small cubes.
Feed a variety of foods and remember brine has almost no nutrition so it should just be an occasional treat.
Let's see some pics.

[sambrinar]

Thanks for the input. I am leary to put pics on because the others look so good. But I will when I get every thing in. I just added a feather duster and it's not in place yet.

Luckily I have only fed them once. I thought it looked like too much, I do bi-weekly water changes of an average of 3-4 gals. I may need to do weekly.

Thanks Brenda

[lcstorc]

We love pics of all kinds. Be sure none of our tanks were very pretty in the beginning. Show us some pics or we get mad.

[sambrinar]

Ok, OK, I take pics tomorrow and post them this weekend, if I can figure out how. not real computer saavy. Brenda

[BigAl07]

let your water test results help guide you in your water change schedule. 3-4 gals every other week isn't bad as long as your water tests don't indicate any problems and as long as you don't start skipping and going for longer periods. If you do it every week and skip a week then it's only 2 weeks apart. If you go every other week and skip one then in theory if could be 4 weeks and that's getting "long on the tooth" for a 12g tank. With 12g you don't have a lot of volume so bad things can happen fast. I like to do 2g each week and sometimes more *yeah I'm anal over W/C's*.

Let your tank "talk" to you... if you're over feeding you'll know it... feed less than more.... hungry fish (to a certain level) are healthy fish... but also not.. starving fish are dying fish.


Don't sweat the pics. If I worried about comparing mine to the others I would have NEVER posted pic 1 here. It's all about you and YOUR tank. Each tank is a work of art in itself!

[Jason25]

Lynn is right post your pics and in a few months you look back at some of your earlier pics and simply be amazed.