Ken's Flake food question?

zachjohnson65

zachjohnson65

AC Members
Mar 31, 2007
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Staunton, VA
I have been using Ken's Cichlid mix which has flake mixed in. I have noticed that lately that my water is not as clear as normal. And during my siphions i notice some flakes residue. I'm still doing 15-20% water changes weekly, nothing else has changed just the food. Before i was using Ken's pellets.
 
i have never used kens products... although i hear good things about them. i have had problems in the past with flake food. it does seem to cloud the water faster. i also believe that you should up your water changes to 30%.
 
zachjohnson65 said:
I have been using Ken's Cichlid mix which has flake mixed in. I have noticed that lately that my water is not as clear as normal. And during my siphions i notice some flakes residue. I'm still doing 15-20% water changes weekly, nothing else has changed just the food. Before i was using Ken's pellets.
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I used Ken's flake food when I bred angelfish. I noticed the same residue you are talking about in my growout tanks. I did not have a problem with it in my planted tanks. Overfeeding and not doing a large enough water change would be my guess, as others have mentioned.
 
Hah, Petluvr, love the new avatar!

Anyway, I don't really like to use flake because I do notice that the fish don't seem to get all of it before it gets pushed down by the filter out put or gets waterlogged. Unlike pellets and wafers, the flake breaks up really easily, and my fish don't seem to see it to pick at it and eat it up once on the substrate, plants, etc.

I noticed that it helped a lot to breakup the feed into 2-3 parts. I'd feed 1/2 to 1/3 of the flake, wait until that was gone, and then feed the next portion. That really cut down on the missed flake. It wasn't necessarily overfeeding, but more like too much food all at once. I hadn't been overfeeding; the fish just couldn't eat it all before the filter sucked it down. I had a lot of filtration on that tank.
 
I usually never use flake food as my tanks are all adult communities with large fish. But since my assorted Africans started naturally breeding in my large display tank I felt I had to do something to support the tiny yellow faces that stick out of the reef wall at feeding time. So I have been allowing a couple big pinches of flake to be pushed directly underwater by canister outflow down onto the reef face, and the little guys pop out quickly to take the flake as the adults try and grab the them. Amazingly the fry seem to stay just out of reach as they grab flake.

But no doubt that flake contaminates and raises nitrate levels more then pellets or solid foods. Mostly because portion of the flake goes unaccounted for and therefore uneaten and dissolves into the water.
 
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