How Much Food?

[barb218]

I have 5 tiger barbs in a tank i have had for 3 weeks with fish in it for 2 weeks. At the moment the fish only get fed a small amount but they seem to finish the food very quickly.

should i increase the amount of food?

 

[onidrase]

Really depends. My tiger barbs are prone to over eating, so even if they do finish all their food, I don't give them another pinch till they stop gobbling it up. Just make your best judgement, but remember fish can go a long time without food, so chances of you starving them aree extremely slim.

 

[barb218]

Thanks, i am probably going to put a bit more in tomorrow for them than the last week.

 

[TropicalLad21]

So you've introduced 5 tiger barbs after a week of you having the tank? how have you cycled your tank?

You should only give them a small pinch specially with only that amount of fish, that will be fine - they are always lookin for food so don't let that fool you into increasing the amount of food you give.

 

[barb218]

Ok

 

[This Old Spouse]

I have 14 tiger barbs and they act like I never feed them, every time I feed them. They remind me of those old films of pirhanas eating! I feed them three times a day (a very small amount) and they always eat it all before it hits the substrate.

Your tank isn't cycled, so you really need to be careful about overfeeding in the meantime, otherwise you're just adding more ammonia to the amount being produced by the fish.

You ARE doing daily water changes, right?

 

[eaglesaquarium]

No more food than they can eat in 30 seconds every other day until the cycle is over. More food = more ammonia. The fish would be much better off with less food and less ammonia. Once it is cycled, you can slowly increase the feeding to 6 days a week. You should still fast them once a week though. But still no more food than they can eat in 30 seconds. Overfeeding is a major contributing factor to many fish ailments.

 

[barb218]

I am doing water changes every day but i need to know how big should the water changes be?

 

[eaglesaquarium]

BIG. It really depends on what your ammonia test says. Do you have a test kit yet?


If not, I'd be doing 80-90% changes every day until I get one. Other than that, you can't be sure that your changes are big enough. (BTW, 1 90% water change is better than 3 50% changes in rapid succession.)