Need feeding advice

[chkltcow]

Give me some advice on getting food to my fish, please. My tank has 3 Zebra Danios, 5 black neon tetra, a male betta, 3 clown loaches, and 2 otos. For the tetras, danios, and betta... I feed them regular flake food, freeze dried bloodworms, and sinking cichlid pellets (omnivore stuff). The loaches get shrimp pellets in addition to the sinking cichlid pellets or whatever they're willing to come up for in the floating stuff, and I'll occasionally catch them snacking on a bit of algae wafer I drop in for the otos.

Here's the problem though. It seems like none of the sinking pellets ever make it down to the bottom for the loaches. Those little danios are just vicious on it. They eat 90% of the floating food, too... it seems. The 3 little danios are getting fat... fat fat fat fat FAT! The tetras and loaches look like they're struggling at mealtime to get anything out of it while the danios are ballooning up.

Any suggestions A) for any other variety of food for the fish... and B) how to deliver food to my bottomfeeders before the greedy little zebras snatch it all.

For reference, it's a 55 gal tank... and the clowns are still very very small, all of them well under 2". I have to break the shrimp pellets up or they won't touch them.... which is why they prefer the small cichlid pellets.

 

[LittlePuff]

Feed at both ends of the tank at the same time. Can't be in 2 places at once.

Kim

 

[Blinky]

After lights out, when the room light is keeping the tank in a sort of 'dusk' for a bit, drop in some food for the loaches - they'll get it and the danios, being completely diurnal little piggies, will likely miss it on the way down.

 

[mcps95]

I had the same problem in my tank where my Bala Sharks would eat stuff on the way down before my bottom feeders (Clown Loaches and Pictus Cats) could get to it. I began both spreading out the food along the length of the tank and also feeding the sharks first and then a little later feeding the bottom feeders.

My clowns also have taken a liking to TetraMin Tablets. They fall much faster than shrimp pellets and the clowns can break them up themselves.

 

[hermxl1]

I've got the same problem with 3 tetras grabing everything, even the sinking foods from my bottom feeders. I can't spread the food to each end of the tank cuz my prefilter at one end sucks it out pretty quickly. I've resorted to throwing the pellets into the water to make them sink faster....

 

[LongTime]

If you do not sleep all the way through the night, you can always drop something in when you wake up.