How Often Should I Be Feeding My Guppies?

[AmyStardust]

Hello!

I have 5 beautiful male guppies but I'm not sure how often they're supposed to be fed??

The food pack says 2-3 times a day, which seems slightly excessive to me??

I've been putting in a small pinch of food in the morning and a small pinch in the evening - is this ok, or too much??

Any advice would be great

 

[mwood2]

every other day is usually the way to go with feeding i believe.Over feeding leads to a messy tank and makes for more ammonia in the tank as well.

 

[AmyStardust]

every other day is usually the way to go with feeding i believe.Over feeding leads to a messy tank and makes for more ammonia in the tank as well.

So just 1 pinch of food every other day??

 

[Truck]

yes as mwood2 said. either once every day or once every other day. for guppies i recomend you get a food rich in natural dyes like beetroot so they bring out there very nice colours. i find that aquarian colour food works well with guppies. just remember dont over feed. and the packet says 2-3 times a day because they want you to use the product up quickly so you buy some more. and 2-3 times a day feeding is only recomended for fry

when feeding add a pinch and when its gone add another but do this no longer than 2 minutes

 

[AmyStardust]

yes as mwood2 said. either once every day or once every other day. for guppies i recomend you get a food rich in natural dyes like beetroot so they bring out there very nice colours. i find that aquarian colour food works well with guppies. just remember dont over feed. and the packet says 2-3 times a day because they want you to use the product up quickly so you buy some more. and 2-3 times a day feeding is only recomended for fry

when feeding add a pinch and when its gone add another but do this no longer than 2 minutes

I have tropical fish food, "That helps enrich natural colours", so that should be ok right??

I think I'll stick to feeding them a small amount every evening, if that sounds ok??

They're technically my 4 year old's "pets" and he never forgets to feed them so I think he'd be a little confused if we started missing days! Lol!

 

[mwood2]

well missing a day is fine since most fish need to not be feed for a few days before they even begin to starve. Its fine as long as you keep an eye on the water quality. Also a good diet of their food then just flakes might be a good idea as well. I feed my fish Blood worms and Brine shrimp as well.

 

[AmyStardust]

well missing a day is fine since most fish need to not be feed for a few days before they even begin to starve. Its fine as long as you keep an eye on the water quality. Also a good diet of their food then just flakes might be a good idea as well. I feed my fish Blood worms and Brine shrimp as well.

I've been testing the Ammonia and Nitrite levels daily and I'm still doing daily water changes as they're new into the tank so I didn't want the ammonia to shoot through the roof!!

I've been cleaning a gravel a little whilst changing the water too so I'm hoping I'm keeping everything up to scratch!!

This is my first attempt at keeping Guppies - and I have to say that they're such lively little things - I was trying to get a water sample yesterday and they all swam to the surface and started crowding around my fingers!! Lol!

I was told to give them blood worms occasionally as a treat - is it ok to buy them frozen?? How often should I give them these??

 

[mwood2]

i buy them frozen, I put a cube into a bowl of water and let it warm up, once all the worms are released I use an eye dropper and drop them into the tank. While my AFD loved the worms they did seem to make my Molly Constipated. make sure you watch the behavior of your guppies when you feed them the worms. Although when i used brine shrimp none of my fish/frogs have had any issues.

 

[AmyStardust]

i buy them frozen, I put a cube into a bowl of water and let it warm up, once all the worms are released I use an eye dropper and drop them into the tank. While my AFD loved the worms they did seem to make my Molly Constipated. make sure you watch the behavior of your guppies when you feed them the worms. Although when i used brine shrimp none of my fish/frogs have had any issues.

Ok - thanks for the advice!!

 

[chesterscot]

i feed my fish frozen food once a week amy

 

[paul123]

i feed my fish frozen food once a week amy

i think about 2-3 times a day is enough

 

[Pleccy]

I feed my fish on flake once a day, supplemented with frozen and live foods twice a week. When I want to condition fish for breeding I feed them exclusively on live foods.

 

[tenohfive]

For a community tank I'd look at feeding a pinch once a day, as much as they'll gobble down in a couple of minutes. They'll be quite happy with that amount, and treats like bloodworm weekly. If you've got any plecs or bottom feeders I'd chuck in catfood pellets every couple of days and cucumber or some other form of veg once a week.

The other advantage is that as soon as they see you and see the lid open if they're reasonably hungry they'll go for it straight away, meaning none makes it to the bottom to rot away and break down into ammonia etc. And of course the less you feed, the less they s**t which is handy if you've got a newly setup aquarium and are being careful about ammonia levels.

 

[OldMan47]

For guppies, the frozen food would be fine. If you get the stuff in small cubes, you could use maybe 1/4 of a cube for a meal for 5 fish. An important ingredient for a guppy's diet is vegetable matter. I use spirolina flakes once in a while to make sure my vegetable loving fish get enough greenery in their diets. You could feed your guppies 10 times a day without a problem if you could bring yourself to feed little enough each time. I find that once or twice a day is as little as I am willing to feed mine. To get that same amount of food to the fish over multiple feedings would mean much smaller feedings. The concept of starving the fish every week or so has not proven to be a good idea but it has the advantage of removing some of the excess food from the tank by making the fish go looking for what they missed the other 6 days. They do not actually end up going hungry in most tanks because most end up overfed.