Feeding: quantifying "too much", or "how much is enough"?

gray808 · Sep 23, 2020

I keep reading a proper amount to feed your fish is "just as much as they will quickly consume and no more".

The problem with this is that it's not very scientific.

My clowns are don't have the best aim, for every pellet they grab and eat, they will grab and miss 10. They don't seem interested in ones that have fallen all the way to the bed, though I will occasionally see them slurp one up.

Half at least of flake seems to just swirl around the tank until they dissolve, though the Chromis make a good show of trying to hunt it all down.

All of the fish (except Houdini, who I haven't seen since I added them to the tank), act like they are absolutely starving to death and go crazy when I add food.

How do I tell if I am feeding them enough?
How do I tell if I am feeding them too much?

It seems like if I sat there and every 2 minutes added the pellets, they would wholeheartedly eat all the ones the could grab.
Short of sitting there with a pair of tweezers and dispensing one pellet to each fish at a time, until they all refuse one, I don't know what "as much as they will quickly consume and no more" means.

I have 2 small clowns, 3 small Black axil Chomis, and that is basically it for active feeding (there is also a Watchman Goby, or the dessicated skeleton of one, somewhere in the tank, he promptly swam into the rockwork, and I've not seen him since). I'm not sure how much all these lil dudes can eat, or need to eat.

--Gray

Spare time · Sep 23, 2020

I really doubt you can feed the fish too much (in that it would be bad for the fish) except for feeding to much of a certain type of food. There is no way to say what is the best amount to feed as different species have different rates at which they expend energy. What is typically defines as best feeding in this hobby is how much you can feed without leftovers that just end up as excess waste. If we were trying to be scientific, we would be way over the heads of most in this hobby and would not be very practical considering how atypical tank life is compared to being in the wild.

ichthyogeek · Sep 23, 2020

Well, you're feeding enough if the fish are maintaining body weight (or putting body weight on after starvation), and/or growing at an adequate pace (said pace depends on the fish, and the temperature of the tank).

You're feeding too much if the fish are overly chunky. Note that in female fish, the "chunkiness" can be either eggs, or overfeeding. And if you feed a lot of higher fat foods like squid, you can cause fatty liver disease, which might make you think the fish is overly pregnant/chunky.

If the fish start to look starved, then you need to up your feeding. This typically shows first in the stomachs of the fish, and then the lateral line/spine starts to show up.

With pelagic eating fish (clowns, damsels, etc), it's always better to feed smaller amounts more often, rather than larger amounts less often. As you've found, they have a high miss ratio, and aren't likely to suck food off the bottom. Maybe, say, a pinch of pellets 2x-3x a day.

Also, congratulations! Your fish have trained you to think they are constantly starving when they do the "feed me!" dance. It's actually really common, especially when the fish have a primary foodbearer. They do a wiggle, food comes in. Pavlov's fish.

For example, my tank has a flame angel, hippo tang, and two clownfish. I feed around 15-30 Formula 1 pellets once a day, and that works for the fish (angelfish and tang will mop up any that reach the substrate. The fish aren't starving, and they aren't getting overly chubby. I could stand to feed more though, especially at a different time of day.