Filter Media Never Really "Dirty"...Problem?

[Kaskade10729]

Young fish do better with constant smaller amounts of food. Older fish do better with only being feed once or twice a day. Flakes are generally not good for goldfish because there really isn't much food per bite. It generally turns into a mess as the fish start to get bigger. They do a lot better with sinking foods especially with one that has swim bladder issues already.

The thing is, they clearly prefer the flakes if you watch their eating behavior -- when I drop the sinking New Life Spectrum pellets in, they kind of graze slowly and seem to keep "chewing" them for a long while before they go down, in addition to competing with one another over them when they fall into the gravel. It seems the flakes are eaten "more easily" if I am describing it right...

At any rate, I switched from commercially poor foods (from what I was told) like Aqueon and Tetra flakes to the Omega One Goldfish Flakes as I was told if I was GOING to feed flakes, these are more "premium;" do you think I should switch to strictly feeding the pellets?

Feeding peas and other veggies should be a regular scheduled thing. A little bit 3-4 times per week is a good idea. I've tossed some lettuce in the tank before and they shredded it quite happily.

We tried the lettuce thing and it was a nightmare -- they didn't really want much of it and the leafs merely made floating seaweed in the tank which I had to remove the next day. They don't seem to care for ANY veggies save for peas (we tried zuchinni but they merely played with the discs like they were frisbees) but I can step up the amount of times we feed the peas...

 

[THE V]

With the pellets they are doing exactly what it looks like, stopping to chew. I doubt they actually prefer the flake they are just more active in hunting them down. With swim bladder issues, sucking down more air while eating is a bad idea.

You need to chop the lettuce and zuchinni up into little peices (pellet sized). But yes it does make a mess in the tank. Normally these are things to add in as a treat before a water change.

I used to toss them ghost shrimp and some elodea on occasion as well.