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Fish Feeding


CJs Aquatics
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On 10/31/2022 at 4:54 AM, CJs Aquatics said:

Hey everybody, just wanted to hear what the community had to say about how they fatten up there fish, specifically fish that just left quarantine and need to put on some weight, fry, or picky eaters that only like live foods?

Baby brine shrimp, live lack worms, daphnia, and small pieces of bacon for crayfish and anything bigger than an adult angelfish

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I wouldn't. To be honest most domestic fishes could find a diet helpful; if it truely needs to put on some weight i would just feed it three times a day for a week or so - but no more than it will eat. Leading pollutant for an aquarium is decaying fish food. What to feed - well that depends on the species. For angels - i mostly give them fluval bug bites and a bit of algae max; after all angels gotta eat their salads to stay healthy.

Edited by anewbie
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On 10/30/2022 at 9:54 PM, CJs Aquatics said:

Hey everybody, just wanted to hear what the community had to say about how they fatten up there fish, specifically fish that just left quarantine and need to put on some weight, fry, or picky eaters that only like live foods?

Just left quarantine - Needs to put on some weight

I will add one more feeding on the auto feeder of pellets or sticks if I'm working on conditioning the fish.  Sometimes I will utilize repashy type foods since they can kind of sit in there and the fish can feed off of it throughout the day.. Bulking up also sometimes requires me to separate a fish species by gender if they are too focused on "socializing" when in mixed company.

I will feed live foods regularly to supplement that dry foods schedule. My live options are limited to the cultures currently running here for adolescent and adult fish are, live baby brine shrimp, white worms, earthworms (small species all the way up to big nightcrawlers), pond snails, Malaysian trumpet, ramshorns, and slightly bigger cultured snails. All of the snails and worms are fed nutritionally dense foods to make them more complete foods for the fish.  So far work with daphnia and blackworms seasonally but might eventually break their codes as well.  

Fry

Normally I always put a bit of seasoned mulm'y plant etc in where every fry are going to have some good colonys of micro fauna to eat. I then feed vinegar eels days 1-7, grindal worms days 2-10, live baby brine shrimp days 3-21, whiteworms days 14-45, with prepared foods offered along side live from day 30 on. 

Picky eaters 

I offer whatever I have until I find one they will eat. I then offer new foods with the food they will eat to get them used to the concept of it being food. My theory is that eventually they will associate the smell of the new food. Same as leaving quarantine I will feed live here but actively work to get them to recognize prepared foods as food and accept whatever dry foods I want them to eat.

 

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There is food that stays relatively safe for a day or so in a tank and fish can graze on through the day. Cooked, peeled, deveined shrimp for human consumption being one such item. They come in all sizes, but for grazing purposes a small one will do nicely. While they will eventually decay, since they've been cleaned and deveined and cooked, there are no active bacteria in them when they hit the tank. That gives the fish time to casually graze and pick away at the shrimp for much of the day. If there's any part of the shrimp left at night, you can remove it, but it gives the tank some food for grazing purposes all day long. Food blocks serve the same purpose but may not have the right nutrition for the fish depending on the fish in question and the fish have to figure out that it's food. 

When a fish dies in your tank it's loaded with active bacteria and digested and semi-digested food in its gut. While the other fish will peck away at it and eat it, the active bacteria will be starting the decay process and creating ammonia immediately. Processed food like a cleaned, cooked, deveined shrimp is less likely to cause an ammonia spike while giving your fish a grazing food source. And in the wild, most fish will pick at a dead or dying fish, so there's little adjustment for them to eat a dead shrimp. And they're inexpensive as a food source.  

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