help about feeding!!

[kaley822]

i just got my first fish today. i got 6 neon tetras and 4 leopard danios. first of all, the guy at the pet store said they would be fine together but the danios spaz out and chase the neons. they dont appear to be biting them or anything but will this stress out the neons and kill them? secondly, when i tried to feed them the danios always ate all the food and the neons couldnt get any. is there any way i can make sure the neons get some food? please help

 

[Alien Anna]

Hi Kaley,
firstly, can you please refrain from using terms like "spaz out" - it's offensive to disabled people. Thanks.

Secondly, to answer your questions, I think the issue is slightly more fundamental than will the racing around kill your neons. I suspect a much more serious problem (although I'm praying I'm wrong). Did you just buy the tank, set it all up and put the fish in, just like that? If so, you really need to understand about the nitrogen cycle.

Forgive me if you know this already, but it goes like this: fish waste turns into ammonia. Ammonia is deadly toxic to fish, but thankfully there are bacteria which can turn that deadly ammonia into slightly less toxic nitrite. Nitrite isn't good for fish either, but then you have some other bacteria that come along and turn it into nitrate. Nitrate isn't toxic in normal concentrations and is either used up by your live plants, or if you haven't got live plants, it's removed when you do a water change. This is known as the Nitrogen Cycle, and a tank that has the Nitrogen Cycle operating in it is said to be "cycled".

When you first set up a tank it doesn't have any of the beneficial bacteria, so the levels of ammonia rise and rise and your fish die, more often than not. After a few days, the bacteria have grown sufficiently to break down this ammonia into nitrite and the ammonia levels fall to zero - but then the nitrite levels rise and rise. Any fish that survived the ammonia "spike" now have to run the gauntlet of the nitrite spike. After a few days or weeks, the bacteria develop that can break down the nitrite to nitrate. Nitrite levels fall to zero and your fish can now swim happily. Except that you might not have any fish left by this point and those who have survived have been damaged

Fortunately, danios are tough. Neons are less so, however, and they probably won't make it. You can increase their chances by doing a 10-20% water change every day and only feeding your fish sparingly, every other day, testing regularly for ammonia and nitrite to see how the cycling is going. Fish are cold blooded so need a lot less food than warm blooded creatures - fasting is good for them and also cuts down on the waste they produce. I strongly suspect you are over-feeding your fish, which will kill them, sadly

You can speed up the cycling process by getting some old filter media from someone else's filter, plus a handful of their gravel. If you keep the filter media and gravel wet and oxygenated, it should contain the bacteria you need to get things going. I am personally sceptical about products purporting to contain these bacteria already, such as "Cycle" - I think they're a waste of money.

I think your actual mix of fish isn't bad - danios are very lively fish, and neons are a little more sedate but I don't anticipate any problems. However, high ammonia and high nitrite can cause "darting" behaviour, which may be what you are witnessing.

Good luck, and stick around - it'll work out in the end.

 

[kaley822]

thanks for responding promptly and trying to help. first of all, i did not put the fish in the tank until after it had been running for four days. I also put gravel that the fish store guy gave me that already had the beneficial bacteria. maybe four days wasnt long enough (although the pet store guy said i only needed to wait 2-3) because the darting behavior you describe sounds exactly like that of the danios, especially the largest one. but if it is the ammonia, then why aren't the neons exhibiting the same behavior? anyway, i had no idea that it could take as long as weeks to make it safe everything i read that came with the tank said 2 or three days. As for overfeeding them, i heard from the pet store guy, whose opinion i am slightly more skeptical of now, that i should give the fish how ever many flakes they would eat in a 30 second period of time. i think i put in about three large flakes, which were all eaten by the danios. i was only going to feed them once a day because thats what i did with my betta fish and it worked well. is this too much food? they seemed really hungry.

 

[semper fi]

the problem with overfeeding fish is that the excess food sits on the bottom and can cause an ammonia spike. anything decomposing in the tank is turned into ammonia then nitrite then nitrate. do not feed the fish more than they can consume in five minutes. that is my rule with my fish. any excess waste is removed from the tank by taking a peice of syphon hose with a peice of nylon over the end secured by a rubberband. start the syphon and suck up the excess food and fish waste letting it go into the nylon and the water into the tank.

semper fi

 

[Kossy]

To prevent over-feediong you do the old how much they eat in 5 mins job. However I prefer to have corys they eat all the junk the other fish don't eat and clean the tank. Also I reccomend getting at least 2 more neons neons really need to be in at least a shoal of 8 a shoal of six isn't good enough for neons.

 

[smb]

Danios are a bit more active than neons in general. They can stress them out and it sounds like they might be. Since it's your first day of them all together I'd wait a few more days as they might settle down and everyone might just settle in.

Leapord Danios are active and inquisitive. They might just be going up to the neons to check them out but the neons swim away and the danios follow like a game. It might also depend on what size tank you have. If within a tank big enough, I would add 3-4 more danios to the mix and see if that settles them down before I'd give up on an already decided community in just 1 day.