How Much Food?

mwood2 · Jan 14, 2009

I am curious as to how often I should feed my tanks since I think I am doing it a bit to often. First off my ADF that I am trying to nurse back to health is doing fine now that I am keeping him in a breeding net (shown below) in my 10 gallon tank. I am feeding him daily by holding out blood worms in front of his face using a eye dropper. He is eating and looks somewhat better but should I be doing this daily or bi daily? Also how many blood worms should I feed? I usually do 2-3 worms per feeding. His problem in the first place was that he was anorexic. Also when I do this I tend to feed my dwarf puffer tank as well. Everyone in that tank eats blood worms (except for the single oto having his feast for the time being) and I tend to feed them a bit daily at this time.

Secondly I am feeding my Molly and her 2 month old fry (if they can still be called fry) 2 pinches of crushed flakes daily. If this to much? I have snails running around and breeding in the tank so I would think they help take care of the extra.

Lastly my oto. I am not sure if they are properly nourished since I dont see them eat at all. They stay in the back of the tank behind my fluval filter all day when I am around and may come out for short times at 1AM to explore. They seem fine although I did find one dead a week back though (cause of death unknown). I feed veggies as well as algae wafers but I never see them eat them. They seem to have bellies so I think there ok but could use some extra suggestions. I have tried Zucchini so far as food. I may try Brussels sprouts tomorrow.

Athena · Jan 14, 2009

Hi - firstly, re the feeding of your ADF. I have two of these and I know that they need to eat more than just 3 frozen bloodworms a day. I normally defrost a cube of bloodworm in a tiny amount of tank water, then with tweezers, add several pinches of the worms, one pinch at a time to make sure they eat some (they are in a community tank and, yes, greedy fish do rush to get the bloodworms so only a few actually reach the gravel for the ADFs). Once I see that they have eaten half a dozen or so each, I stop adding to the tank.

Don't feed them bloodworms every day, either, as this may cause constipation problems. They also love to eat frozen, live or jellied brine shrimp and daphnia, they will munch away on prawns and I've also seen mine attacking an algae wafer. So vary their diet if you can.

And I feed mine twice a day. Had them both for a year and no illness to-date.

As for the Oto's - yes, I have that same problem with mine. I never see them eat! Mine tend to spend most of their time on the tall, grass-like plants I have, so I guess they are grazing on them. They look healthy enough. Occasionally I see them sucking up the sides of the filter, or the walls of the tank and decor, but not very often. I drop in algae wafers and courgette (on a fork) - but these always get eaten by other fish and the frogs.

Re the fry - these need to be fed a little more often than adult fish. I feed my fry 3 - 4 times a day when they are very young, reducing it as they grow. You can use crushed up flake food (make it like powder when they are very tiny), then mix a tweezer pinch of this with a little tank water and pour into the tank above the fry. I use Liquifry powder for mine, plus as they grow a little you can start to give them a bit of crushed up brine shrimp, or daphnia. As yours are 2 months, they probably don't need such powdered food and you can just crush the flakes into smaller portions for them. They will also gobble down any live or frozen foods you offer and nibble on algae wafers or fresh veggies (such as blanched courgette or peas).

Hope that's been of help - Athena