FEEDING

[billy]

I am a reasonably new fishie person and am totally smitten. I have upgraded to a 70litre tank and in it have a few fish 2 guppies, 2 platies, 4 Neons and 4 other very small fish that I've forgotten their name (these were bought on Sunday). I also have 2 ancistrus and 2 aquatic frogs. All my fish seem very happy and the platy (the female) has made me the grannie of lots of babies. The babies are in my old tankm which was a starter tank and they are ALL doing very well.

I checked my nitrate levels the other day and they were not too good - I have taken advice and been doing water changes and putting 'bacterlife' in the tank to hopefully assist in bringing the levels down.

My question is I was told to feed the fish every couple of days - how long can you leave feeding them? They are always hungry.

ps I'm excited about joining your site - someone to talk to about my new found hobbie....

 

[joshua]

i think that is okay... fish do not know how much food is too much... my neons ate until they became quite bloated and they still kept on eating.. kinda my mistake there to feed so much ehhe

 

[Kossy]

Its actually healthy to fast them once a week for one day i feed my fish about 3 times per day... i feed them about a pinch of flakes and add a quarter of a stone of frozen food and a tablet for each tank i feed the different food at different times and occasionally live brine shrimp

 

[platypus]

Hi Billy,

I think that everyone else has it covered, just wanted to add if you can feed them a variety of different foods - mine get flake, frozen bloodworm and veggies like cucumber or frozen peas every week.

Oh and welcome!

 

[billy]

Thanks everyone sorry it took so long to reply but I am trying to find my way round this site! but as you are all around - to clear the bad nitrate level from my water how many water changes do you think I should do per week! sorry if it sounds like a dumb question!!!!!!!

 

[platypus]

I had very high nitrate levels in my tank once, which I got round by doing twice weekly water changes of about 30%. Others may have different recommendations, but this is what worked for me!

Also, do you have any live plants? If not then get some if you can, they will use the nitrate as fertiliser and so do wonders for lowering the levels.

 

[billy]

Thanks, yes I have about 4 different types of plants. I will follow the advice of 2 water changes a week and re-test in about a weeks time.


thanks again
ps how d'you get the smilies on the bottom of messages???

 

[UM3R]

in my opinion, water changes is the best way to get ur nitrates down and adding live plants... the chemicals such as nitrate down, etc are no good. they will do more harm then good.

so keep up the water changes and u will be ok..

I had a reading off the charts not so long ago and now it is below average at 10ppm.

Before (10-12 days) ago, it was 100ppm which is toxic.

so water changes and plants do the trick!