Can a fish let itself starve?

[Karen B.]

I have few species of fish in 4 aquariums 1 honey gourami, 10 green neon tetra, 10 chili rasbora, 7 false julii cory, 3 clown killifish, neocaradina shrimps and nerita snails.

I feed my fish twice per day. I used to feed them flake food, micro pellets, bug bites, freeze dried food and frozen food. They would eat everything.

Then I imported (because not available in Canada) some of the x-treme food - they don’t eat (they spit it out)

I bought cyclops, mysis and other type of frozen food - none are eaten except for daphnia, bbs and bloodworms.

I am raising clown killifish fry so I started hatching live baby brine shrimps. I figured I would give some to my other fishes for their 2nd meal... and now they won’t eat anything except live/froze baby brine shrimp or frozen blood worm/daphnia (aside from the corydoras, the otocinclus and the shrimps)

My problem is that I am leaving for a week or 2 and was hoping to use an auto-feeder... Will they eventually eat the food distributed once hungry enough?! I plan to mix different food in the feeders.

 

 

[Scott C]

They will be fine, if you feed me steak and lobster or similar high end foods for weeks then offer me McDonalds I'd refuse it also, let me get hungry for a day or 2 and i'd gladly accept McDonalds, same with fish. I'm sure you could condition them to eat almost anything after a couple days without food, they will survive, remember to under feed rather than over feed especially during transition or vacation.

[lefty o]

much like little kids throwing a tantrum and wont eat something that isnt their favorite. when they get hungry, that growling tummy will get them eating.

[DaveO]

Wow, that's quite the collection of food.

[Colu]

They will eat when they get hungry enough I would  just put a mixture of your food in the auto feeder I don't think you will have any problems 

[BIG GREEN]

I have seen it happen with wild caught fish. I also had a tire trk eel starve, would not eat for nothing( wild caught). With that said you have created the problem you have right now, I been down that road before, go a day or 3 with out feeding and they will change thir minds.

I also saved myself a lot of money when I stopped buying so many diffrent fish foods  a mixed diet is good but over kill is bad for the checking account over time.......

[Odd Duck]

Vibra bites don’t lend towards dispensing small amounts smoothly, FYI.  As long as your mixtures are fairly consistent, they dispense reasonably well from automatic feeders.

If you put the foods into week long pill boxes and have somebody come in and feed, then you can have a mix of whatever dry food you want since they would dump one entire compartment into tank.

This would hold 2 weeks worth unless you have some extremely big tanks.  You can also find smaller ones for smaller tanks.  They do also make some very small auto dispensers that dump straight down from a compartment vs the rolling, “measuring” each time type dispensers (which are fairly unreliable for small amounts).

 

[Karen B.]

On 7/1/2021 at 11:08 PM, BIG GREEN said:

I have seen it happen with wild caught fish. I also had a tire trk eel starve, would not eat for nothing( wild caught). With that said you have created the problem you have right now, I been down that road before, go a day or 3 with out feeding and they will change thir minds.

I also saved myself a lot of money when I stopped buying so many diffrent fish foods  a mixed diet is good but over kill is bad for the checking account over time.......

Yeah, it’s partly because I first started with crayfish - so you buy 3-4 different food for them. Then I got guppy - 3-4 different food for them and it built up like that. But I sure will narrow it down now with my fish preferences, etc!

[Karen B.]

On 7/1/2021 at 11:25 PM, Odd Duck said:

Vibra bites don’t lend towards dispensing small amounts smoothly, FYI.  As long as your mixtures are fairly consistent, they dispense reasonably well from automatic feeders.

If you put the foods into week long pill boxes and have somebody come in and feed, then you can have a mix of whatever dry food you want since they would dump one entire compartment into tank.

This would hold 2 weeks worth unless you have some extremely big tanks.  You can also find smaller ones for smaller tanks.  They do also make some very small auto dispensers that dump straight down from a compartment vs the rolling, “measuring” each time type dispensers (which are fairly unreliable for small amounts).

 

I did buy one of the automatic food dispenser that has 14 slots so I can prepare the exact amount. I will use that one for my biggest tank with different species with different needs.