Fish's stomach is only as big as its eye?

I'm guessing its relatively true for small tetras an such, but definitely not for large predatory fish.

Asterophysus batrachus is known to eat things larger than its own body, possible because its elastic skin and stomach lining can inflate like a ballon
This is a pic from planet catfish of a recently fed one.
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I don't suppose you know of a place to get one of those gulper cats, Spartan? I've been looking for someone to bring them in locally for a while to no avail.

Many fish specifically target larger fod items.
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It's a matter of energy expelled vs energy gained (chasing down too many small prey items can result in a net loss of calories in some cases).

However, this behavior would easily lead to overconsumption if the food is a commercially prepared dry feed like flakes or pellets which are much more nutritionally dense than any live items.

So no, a fish's eye size has no relation to that of its stomach, but the underlying "moral" behind that old wives' tale is that it's very easy to overfeed most fish in an aquarium setting.
 
I don't suppose you know of a place to get one of those gulper cats, Spartan? I've been looking for someone to bring them in locally for a while to no avail.
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Well, according to this thread , http://forums.waterwolves.com/index.php?showtopic=85827,
belowwater.com is the only place that imports them.

BUT, i happen to know one of my LFSs has good connections in SA and can specially order them for you, but at a pretty high cost.
http://rainforestpet.com/index.php?cPath=10_150 , as you can see they can access many exotic and rare species of fish
 
Thanks; shows that it never hurts to ask again. I hadn't noticed that thread over at WW.

Now that I know where to get one, my reason for not owning one will be purely financial. ;)
 
when i bought my fish the pet store told my daughter she could only feed her fish 1 floating ball of fish food per fish so this is what she has been doing for over a month she has 3 kish in her tank and every day she puts 3 pellets of fish food in so according to this thread her fish are starving to death? should she be feeding them more yes or no?
 
If you are keeping a 'community', the generalized feeding rules are likely to be used for most inhabitants. If a specialized predator is being kept, it is up to the keeper to research the fish, preferably prior to purchase. These are seldom fish suitable to a small mixed community, so specialized feeding is less of an issue. It is part of the decision to keep the fish.
 
You could feed the fish more, it wouldnt hurt them any. Speed their growth up as well.

Just dont feed them more than can eat in 3 mins or so.
 
I work weekends at a LFS, we use this generalization to help people who are new to the hobby and keeping small 'community' type fish understand how much to feed. I'd much rather they feed their fish a little less than have their tank go through an ammonia spike from overfeeding - people's inclination seems to be to feed WAY more than a tiny fish needs.
 
I dont believe this rule is true, considering some (quite a few) fish dont even have true stomachs. Its much more to do with diet.

Take a pike for example. This fish will naturally swallow anything that will fit in its mouth. Because it is an ambush predator, and therefore oppertunistic in its feeding regeime (it doesnt know how long it has to wait in the reeds for its next meal), its stomch is HUGE, and is for holding the food prior to digestion. Its gut length is very short, because the quality of the food (ie high protein content of prey) is very easily metabolised (removed from the gut) by the pike into energy (anabolism) or growth (catabolism).

An otocinclus, on the other hand, has a huge gut length, and a very small/non existant stomach. This is because otos are detrivores, and the quality of the food they thrive on is the exact opposite of a pike (otos food has a low protein content), and so there gut lenth is far longer. It takes a great deal more time to convert the 'crap' that otos eat into energy, and so the gut length is longer to give the fish more time to metabolise this.

Rant over!
 
scavenger said:
Does anyone have anything to say about this?
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Well, My oscars have been know to stuff several goldfish or crayfish into their mouths, would be like 20 eyeballs of food, So I say it is bogus.
 
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