Never be scared of feeding your fish!

It seems that over the years of listening to fellow service guys and other hobbyist that there is an issue when it is time to feed your fish. So I wanted to dig a little deeper as to, "why are we starving our fish?"

The main reason why people are told to be careful when feeding the fish is to prevent the water quality from becoming real dirty. I would have to agree with this. It is very important to monitor the water parameters on a monthly even bi-weekly basis. But do we need to starve our fish to accomplish this? My answer is "NO" we do not. There are plenty of easy solutions to this matter and I will go over some.

The first could cost a little in the beginning but save you time in the long run. The rule of thumb is when searching for the right filtration you need the max volume of water to travel through your filter at least 4 times per hour. So if that is the “rule of thumb’ then that means your quantity of fish in your tank need to be 2 inches of fish for every gallon of water, make sure to consider the max size of the fish, not what it looks like when you buy it. My approach in this situation would be to purchase a larger filtration system that will have more volume per hour and then I won’t be as limited to the size or quantity of fish I can get.

Here is the cheaper way but more labor is involved. You should already be performing a 20% water change every month. With that in mind, let’s say that you have just the basic filtration and want more fish. From my experience you will need to perform a larger water change per month. To be more of help in this matter, there is such thing as doing to much of a water change so instead of performing a larger water change per month. Break it into 2 or 3 water changes in a month. This way you won’t be risking stressing your fish out or any other inhabitant. I prefer to change my water every week it’s easier on the back.

If you follow these 2 methods you should not be concerned on how much you are feeding your fish. But you are probably still wondering how to tell when enough food is enough. That is very simple, after putting the food in the tank the food should float around for no longer than 3 minutes. I recommend shutting off the filtration and allowing the food to sink to the less aggressive fish and then that way you don’t dirty your filters and potentially waste food, that stuff can get very expensive.

Realize that under feeding can cause illness to the fish and potentially kill it. That is why it is so important to not feed less and to make sure you are feeding your fish a healthy nutritional diet. I will go more into the good and bad in food choice.

Thanks,
Tim
www.CleanMyFish.com
U.T. Inc