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Feeding Marine Fish
by Reginald Dutta

Imagine yourself on the dark side of the moon, in a shelter built by a totally different form of life, being fed with wierd coagulations of a form, texture and taste you'd never conceived of before - that's how your marine fish may feel.

Freshwater fish living in ditches, rivers and lakes have grown accustomed to man; marine fish have not - ocean vastness can scarcely have noticed the occasional ship or swimmer.

Freshwater fish have long been accustomed to feed at the surface; marines have not.

Freshwater fish have long been accustomed to the smell of man, his refuse, his pollution; marines have not.

Relatively clean, vast and flowing in huge waves and tides that no normal river bank could possibly withstand, the ocean teems with plankton, and myriad ever-changing, free growing foods utterly different from those that you are now offering your pet fish.

Practivally any marine fish you see has been caught wild, and abruptly been faced with you. Being on the dark side of the moon is not a far-fetched analogy - only he didn't ask to come to your tank, you forced him!

So there are no golden rules; large-scale regular commercial breeding is not yet truth; these are the good old days of the individual pioneer when anything goes, and the next technical breakthrough may be due to you.

Remove all food, uneaten after hand feeding, with scrupulous thoroughness, each and every time and use tongs or a siphon tube - your hands could frighten and disturb.

Overfeeding in the sense of surplus scraps littered on the floor does not help at all; each piece should be taken as it falls, in mid-water. Neither does underfeeding help; your patience and time are demanded for this vital job, and regular feeding times will soon be noted by your fish.

Feed the tougher fish first, so as to encourage them to allow the others to eat. The carnivorous tend to take food only when it moves; hungry ones follow all moving objects with their eyes, and excitement increases their rate of breathing and the movement of their gill plates.

Feed often. In real life they are accustomed to picking off coral more or less all day, especially the herbivores; in a freshwater tank fish can always turn to the plants, here they rely on you - change the diet very very frequently - as much as you do for yourself. You must, just must, spend time on this each and every single day - as you do on yourself.

The smaller the mouth, the longer it takes to feed, the daintier the piece and the less the fish will endure the crowded push and shove.

In the ocean the light tends to be poor and fish vision is monocular not binocular like yours, this the sound of food may easily be a greater attraction than sight. Why not hang the morsel on a thread, and dangle it in front? Then you can easily remove it later.

How often does a tropical marine fish in wild life eat an ox, or an oil-fat producing fish like the coldwater cod or halibut? So shred or scrape the beef, the liver, the chicken; keep to flakes of non-oily fish. Daily fresh protein foods are especially beneficial.

Newly hatched shrimps are not all that good; allowed to grow and fill out (eg. in green algae-rich waters) they are then probably the best we now have to offer. Good too, are clean, chopped garden worms; Norwegian brine shrimps; lobster, crabs, prawns, mussels and other bivalves that have been thoroughly cleaned in the special way suitable for feeding. Try to add vitamins like B1 2, C and B to the diet or to the water; algae and green foods are a must - lettuce, cabbage, spinach form a vital part of the diet.

Tubifex worms and live daphnia seem to die too quickly in salt to be widely used in the beginning, but are acceptable if readily eaten in mid-water. Mealworms and white worms should be tried.

Coral should be smeared with food and let into the tanks, dangling or resting on the floor for half an hour, and then removed til next feeding time. Your fish will soon get to know. With especially slow or shy eaters try this smeared coral at dusk, ie. at half-light. This applies to nocturnal fish as well.

Try the patented foods, especially the freeze-dried. Try unusual mixtures too like live daphnia that have been allowed to feed in green algae water first, or foods that have been pre-soaked in vitamin additives. If not too cruel, feed live Guppy or molly young; for large marine try goldfish.

Fish "eat at a gulp", as often as not, so the pieces of food have to be manageable. Anemones need to have the food put directly into their mouths.

A fish already trained to rush for food is a great encouragement to the others; the Sergeant Major and the Beau Gregory are thus often used.

If they maintain a hunger strike past the time when fear should have calmed down and been replaced by hunger, then examine the tank conditions again - urine, pH, DH, temperature, lighting, toxic decay, insufficiently cleaned coral, incompatible fish so that some are kept off by fear, specific gravity, outside tank noises, flashing lights or movements, more aeration, or less nitrites. A change of water would help.

Don't be discouraged; feeding is probably your biggest single problem. Others have done it; the breakthrough can't be too far off - fish are gluttons and want to feed!