How can you tell if you over feed?

[RBP Guy]

Is it possible to tell if you over feed your fish? If so how? Does doing this cloud your water? I just want my boys to be healthy. Thanks

[Faramir]

If they don't eat it all you've over fed.

If you see food on the substrate, you've overfed.

[RENEGADE]

i heard as much as they can eat in 2 mins but i think thats too long so i do 1 min

[wetmanNY]

If you go away fo ra three-day weekend and when you come back, the water is clearer, you're overfeeding.

If you dont give full-grown fish a "fast day" once a week, you're overfeeding.

I agree with Renegade. Even a full minute of feeding frenzy is a heckuva long time, if you time it with a watch.

[OrionGirl]

As was pointed out on another board, we are too often guilty of comparing fish feeding to feeding ourselves, or cats or dogs. The problem here is that we, and cats and dogs, burn massive amounts of energy every minute of every day regulating our temperature. It takes a lot of calories to maintain a healthy body temp--for mammals. In fish, reptiles and amphibians, there is no energy spent keeping warm--they just work muscles to swim, and digest. This requires much, much less food to maintain.

I feed every other day. Fish that get too much food are prone to health problems, just like humans.

[RENEGADE]

i also feed every other day

[Tim Bo]

I am a strong believer in a day or two of fasting and varied diets for full grown fish. The kids I often give a bit more.

[loralove]

I too had the WORST cloud in my 30 gal tank!
It was terrible. I went away on vacation and changed my water 25%. I then put one of those weekend feeders in. I came back and to my amazement my water was much clearer. I tried those water clearing agents and they did not work. I have several fish in my tank. I have 2 Bala Sharks, 5 Tiger barbs, 2 tinfoil barbs, 3 krebensis, 1 pleco, 3 congo tetras, and 2 clown loaches - they feed like crazy and i some how always feel as though they dont get enough to eat. I still dont have the crystal clear water that i would like to have. Any suggestions?

[LMOUTHBASS]

once every other day, remember fish are cold blooded not like us, everything orion girl says pretty much explains it for ya, but ive heard some people who only feed once a week

[OrionGirl]

loralove--your tank is overstocked. Bala sharks can get to 12 inches easily, tinfoils hit 6-8 handily, and clown loaches should be about 12 inches as adults. Your tank can't support this bioload, and the cloudiness is proof. Reduce the bio-load, or get a bigger tank--say a 125.

[Slappy*McFish]

I have to agree with Oriongirl 100%

[pinballqueen]

A fish's stomach is usually about the same size as their eyeball.

Therefore, that's about how much you should feed them (keeping in mind that they do crush their food up; just imagine how much flake, when powdered, would take up that volume.)

I feed my fish roughly that amount every 2-3 days. Also, I am totally in agreement about the variety in your pet's diet. (the fish have more cans of food than I do in the pantry and the fridge :D )

[loralove]

What does it mean to reduce my bio-load?

[SBA]

loralove

basically it means you have too many fish for the size of the tank and the filtration that you have. therefore the biological filter cannot cope with the ammonia excreted by the fish (which could be the cause of your cloudy water), and will probably end up with recurring illnesses and water problems.

there is no easy way to reduce it a lot (less food will help) except for increasing the size of the tank or removing some of the present incumbents (back to the LFS?).

HTH
Ade

[Stuart Watson]

I feed my community tank each morning on the "eye-ball" size principle and ensure it all goes, normally in 30 seconds, and add half-dozen pellets for the 3 congo frogs, or half a small block bloodworms.

On the crab tank, small amount of bloodworms as above or pellets, then flake as above for the 8 barbs.

In the evening, I give a small sprinkle of flake and pellets in both tanks just to relax the fish overnight and I have a very happy set of tanks and good water with almost no substrate debris.

Same with the goldfish.

Sounds like i am overfeeding here so I might switch to mornings only however all seems cool, AND the fish get greens from the plants which I allow for sacrifice!!

Then after this if I remeber I feed the family :-)