Fish always hungry?

[Lylelovett]

Hi all,

My tank is about 6 mos old and I'm slowly adding fish... 4 Chromis, 2 Cardinalfish, 2 Clownfish, 1 Convict Tang... (along with corals and a clean-up crew)... And it seems like they are ALWAYS hungry!

I currently feed them about twice a day and each time they are ravenous... And I feel like I'm putting a pretty decent amount of food in, but in about 4 minutes it's all gone.

This is my first reef tank, so I'm not sure if it's generally agreed upon to leave them a little hungry, feed them more in each session, or feed them throughout the day?

(each feeding is a different kind of food - frozen shrimp/mix, flakes, nori, etc...

Any input is appreciated, thanks!

 

[Flippers4pups]

A fish feeding response will always be this. In the wild, their meals are far and few between. Depends on the fish you keep and what you feed.

Twice a day is usually plenty for most reef tank's. I feed once a day, frozen food. Fat and healthy.

 

[Peach02]

Generally I leave a small sheet of nori in the tank for a day and replace it the next try to have it to a point where they will eat all but a tiny bit and then replace it. Remember all fish have different diets e.g. for my tank I put in frozen brine for my clownfish, coral beauty, bicolour blenny, and fire fish. copapods for my mandarin fish and nori for my coral beauty. Try doing this and you might see some more results but fish will always be looking for food so be careful not to overfeed

 

[4FordFamily]

Fish will eat every hour, relatively ravenously if you let them. You’d have serious water quality issues most likely with this regimen, however.

Fish are opportunists— when food is available they eat. In the ocean, it may not be available for quite a while so they greedily eat when available!