Feeding Time

[garyspence84]

I, like many others I'm sure, love to watch my fish eat. There's nothing I love more than feeding my fish. Especially if iv got something different, or its the weekend (which means bloodworm time) or a we earth worm (cleaned obv) or a fly, and watch them go wild for it. Cleaning, scaping, watching them grow, watching shoals display to one another, courting etc etc all real good, but feeding?...... Brilliant!

Over the years Ive had a fair veriety of different fish. I love watching my severum gobble up anything that goes in (particularly spagetti) I really enjoyed watching ma old bichir open its head up to twice its size to swollow things whole, but now I have tiger barbs, and there amazing to watch, absolutely amazing! There like a crazy pack of tiny perana.

So.... What feeding experiences have you had/have? Or I the only sad sack that loves this?

 

[fluttermoth]

My tiger barbs are called 'The Swarm', for that very reason! People are shocked when they hear them coming out of the water. If they were any bigger, they'd be absolutely terrifying!

My favourite thing has to be watching cories snuffling through the sand though; they're just so darned cute

My sister and I used to tease the goldfish in our pond by dropping stones in

and seeing how many times the fish would try and eat it before it hit the bottom; ten was the record, I believe, and that pond was no deeper than two feet!

 

[garyspence84]

It was probably only a foot and a hold by the time you and your sister threw all the extra stones in

 

[snazy]

I love it when I put vegetables in the tank, count to 3 and the pleco is already on it

My new stuff is watching how fast the shrimp will emerge from nowhere when I put frozen brine shrimp for the baby corys. They don't go for anything else although because of the corys the tank gets several different types of food including frozen blood worms and mosquito larvae. The shrimp just go and stand in the middle of a bunch of fighting corys not bothered one bit.

 

[mbeer21]

Bloodworm time, I think I defrost a cube in a little plastic tub, then lower the tub into the water to gradually let the worms out. But the fish recognize the tub, and some of them (including my massive Angel) actually swim into it to get to the worms before anyone else XD very funny to watch.

 

[dbanner]

Having owned red belly piranhas, bichirs, Lima shovelnose cats and cichlids such as dovii's, jags, red devil, red terror, Texas, jack dempseys, jewels, oscars, severums, Firemouths and so on I'd say my flowerhorn that I currently have is the most aggressive out of anything iv owned.

I used to be able to put my hand in the tank with no problems when I owned any of the fish iv mentioned but when it comes to my flowerhorn.... No chance. He will have my fingers the second I take my eyes off him. He also eats like a pig lol 1-2 bits and a frozen bloodworm cube is gone and he's shaking his body at me as if to say "yeah and where's the rest??" Lol. Other than that he gets hikari gold floating cichlid pellets, new life spectrum sinking pellets, smelt (frozen fish) and frozen prawns. Pellets fed 3x a day, prawns 2-3x a week and frozen cubes or fish once a week. He's only 6 inches at the moment. i had him at 1 inch in july of this year. When he was 5 inches I tried to add a 6 inch jack Dempsey to his tank... He killed the JD overnight. So I then tried a 7 inch buttikoferi... He killed that too. Now iv learnt the hard way that this tank is going to be home to the flowerhorn and nothing else. The tank is 450 litres (120 gal) so at least he has plenty of room

 

[MBOU]

I love feeding my tank at work, i have a bucket next to the tank so i can just sit with my face against the glass watching and most of the fish know my by now and are no longer scared

I generally lob in some New Era Catfish pellets (best catfish pellet ever! even gets golden nugget plecs feeding!), the odd NovoTab and a mix of Tetra Pro Colour and Tetra Prima.... so some of it sinks fast, some sinks slowly and other stuff floats (have to crumble some up as well).

The tank is seriously heavily planted! So it changes some behaviours...

I have about 15 assorted corys (can never remember how many there are!) and 2 dwarf chain loaches that scoff the catfish pellets... and a 'herd' of pink ramshorn snails that trundle about for food as well... when food goes in... you go from no cories to 15 cories in no time lol.

Then there are the ever shy pair of Bolivian rams, the skulk about in the plants and rarely come out, any movement makes them dissapear....

The pair of beligerant blue rams battering their way to the best food! Because they think they are rulers of the tank!

The trio of Blue Rainbows and pair of Madagascar Rainbows who are so bolshy about feeding that water splashes everywhere as they hit the surface really fast (open topped tank) and they send each other flying and knock other fish out the way. The three flying foxes are usually with them.

Cardinals are darting backwards and forwards at lightning speed gobbling up all the food they can find.

The Crossband Rasbora stay in the plants, mostly top left corner and i crumble food up for them and they are cute as anything!! Probably my favourite fish in there!! Feeding mkes them display at each other a lot as well...

Then my gouramis all appear out of the plants, a pair of thicklipped gouramis who rough it up with the rainbows and then the yellow honey gouramis and the croaking gouramis eat as much as they can whilst staying out the way of other fish.

I love how they all interact as there are some really different sizes going on there... from the 8mm crossband rasbora to the rainbows and flying foxes who are about 12-13cm and growing. The fast rainbows and tetras to the slow and quiet gouramis... and yet everyone gets on great, i keep meaning to video it as there is just so much going on in the tank, i love it!

 

[the_lock_man]

When I had loads of assassins, I used to love watching my bronze cories shove the assassins out of the way to get at their Hikari pellets.

The other day I popped a pellet into my small tank (which has no cories), and aimed it to it landed faily near the assassin. Funny as hell watching it turn right round when it realised food was there, it's probe thingy came zooming right out to investigate!

 

[garyspence84]

Loving the use of technical terms there lock man... "Probe thingy" brilliant. I used to have some apple snails years ago and loved watching them oozing up the front of my tank, with there we crazy mouth looking for algae.

Mbou, sounds like you have a set up worthy of a view! Get some pictures up and a we video.