About that 3-minute feeding rule . . .

[Epiphanaea]

The internet tells me I should only be feeding goldfish what they can eat in three minutes.  I have two juvenile fancies, a black moor and a fantail (maybe going to grow into a veiltale?  To be determined).  
 

If I only fed them what they’d eat in three minutes, they’d get one bite each. It takes them a bit just to *find* the food.  Also the moor is a bully about food and the fantail would never get to eat if she couldn’t wait for him to calm down.  (Yes, I’ve offered food in multiple locations - they invariably both want that piece.)

Nobody’s having swim bladder issues, they are most definitely not constipated, and I swear I could actually watch them grow.  
 

So is that rule more for adults?  It just seems counterintuitive to me not to feed a growing creature as much as it wants to eat.  

[Lennie]

On 6/17/2023 at 3:57 PM, Epiphanaea said:

It just seems counterintuitive to me not to feed a growing creature as much as it wants to eat.  

Most fish wants to eat nonstop. They will want to eat nonstop when they are adults too.

 

I feel like it is more of a survival instinct rather than being hungry. Maybe @Odd Duck may help you understand this issue better. Goldfish are prone to many diseases, and bloating is surely one of them. Even if you do everything perfect, they are likely to face swim bladder issues. Don't let them bait you with their cute faces 🙂

I feed my fish twice a day. Whenever I enter my bedroom or fishroom, they beg for food in all tanks. NO WAY they are hungry. They just wanna eat more. and more. and MORE

 

No clue what 3 min thingy is about. I don't find these minute stuff good personally. One betta of mine can eat a world in 1 minute meanwhile another acts very shy. Every fish is different. 

[Mmiller2001]

1 bite each is perfect. Make sure they get some vegetable matter also.

[Epiphanaea]

On 6/17/2023 at 10:34 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

1 bite each is perfect. Make sure they get some vegetable matter also.

It is a heavily planted tank, they have vegetable matter all day long.  🙂

[Epiphanaea]

On 6/17/2023 at 9:53 AM, Lennie said:

I feed my fish twice a day. Whenever I enter my bedroom or fishroom, they beg for food in all tanks. NO WAY they are hungry. They just wanna eat more. and more. and MORE

They do lose interest in food after maybe 10 minutes, though.  They sift and nibble constantly, but they’ll just spit stuff out again after chewing it a bit.

The little gluttons in question: 

[Odd Duck]

With fast moving fish, 3 minutes is fine.  With slower goldfish, 3 minutes is fairly short but 5-7 minutes might be fine.  I think a few bites apiece depending on the size of the bites, is sufficient.  Very rough estimate is the very old “eyeball” rule - feed the amount of food it would take to fill 1-1.5 eyeballs of your fish.  Your goldfish have relatively large eyeballs and relatively slow metabolism, so I would definitely feed on the scant side of the one eyeball end of the rule and honestly half an eyeball would likely be enough for goldies.  The goal is to have minimal leftover food rotting and polluting the tank.  If you have leftovers rotting, you’re feeding way too much unless you’re feeding tiny fry that need to be overfed because they’re still learning to find food.  For them, the leftover waste needs to be siphoned out after each feeding.  Adjust type and amount of food that is fed until you reach the balance where everybody gets 1-3 bites with no leftovers.

[nabokovfan87]

On 6/17/2023 at 5:57 AM, Epiphanaea said:

So is that rule more for adults?  It just seems counterintuitive to me not to feed a growing creature as much as it wants to eat.  

I think it's a saltwater controller I saw back in the day where it had a feed button and everything shut off for 15 minutes.

I do feed pretty heavy sometimes.  I generally give the fish 10-20 minutes to eat. I turn the filters off because they just ingest the fold right away and then I let them eat. Sometimes the food is gone quicker than others.  Like OD mentioned, the main thing is to avoid food sitting and rotting.

I think zenzo and Irene have videos about fish size and how much to feed. I've heard to feed something the size of their eyeball, mentioned  above as well. There's a lot of old tales too about what to feed and how.

For me, I just try to keep it simple. Feed a reasonable amount. A few bites for each fish once a day. I give them time to find that food, check to make sure everyone is eating.

..... another thing to keep in mind is how easy a food is for the fish to eat. I've had fish go nuts for food, struggle to eat it, then they just ignore it.

[Tanked]

 

As the others already mentioned, this practice is likely intended to reduce fouling the water.  In the wild, fish don't get a banquet delivered twice a day.  They are supposed to scavenge and hunt for leftovers.  I believe Cory mentioned in one of the videos that a slightly hungry fish is a healthy fish. 

 

On 6/18/2023 at 6:25 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

For me, I just try to keep it simple. Feed a reasonable amount. A few bites for each fish once a day. I give them time to find that food, check to make sure everyone is eating.

This is my method also.  I often wonder if I am still overfeeding the larger tetras just to ensure that some of the "dust" is left over for the Embers.

[TOtrees]

On 6/17/2023 at 3:24 PM, Odd Duck said:

With fast moving fish, 3 minutes is fine.

I was going to write something similar when I started reading this thread. I think this “rule” might go back to when most fish tank owners had guppies platies and mollies and maybe an angels or two. With all those, they eat fast, they keep eating as long as there is food, and they quickly develop physiological/health issues due to overeating. 

The challenge arises when you have fast-eating and slow-eating fish in the same tank, e.g., any of the above plus something like cories or plecos. In that situation, you end up trying a bunch of solutions and figuring out what works for you. For me (I have that situation in a number of tanks), one strategy is to feed a very fine or a small food that floats on the top, plus a few pieces of larger sinking pellet-type foods that get hidden in areas that are densely planted or underneath things. 

Edited June 19, 2023 by TOtrees

[Jack CO]

Many have already given you great advice, but I figure it wouldn’t hurt to share my personal experience. 
I have a 2,000 gallon outdoor pond (Colorado) with 9 common goldfish, 5 koi, a few green eared sunfish and a Chinese high fin banded shark. We feed pretty heavily in the pond, but none of the fish have experienced health issues nor are overweight. It is fairly common for them to get multiple large feedings throughout the day because many family members will feed them. These feedings are typically multiple handfuls of pond pellets. My fish definitely always beg for food at the water’s edge, so much so that they always follow you around the pond. The goldfish, in my experience, will eat one or two bites and then stop eating per feeding. I have never seen them gorge themselves even with the abundance of pellets available to them. My koi will definitely eat constantly without stop, but they are nowhere near full grown (only like 20 inches) and are still in perfect health. 
I suppose I should also mention that the goldfish spawn really hard for weeks so the extra food definitely helps. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

With goldfish I try to feed them multiple times a day and multiple type of food a day. Veggies or veggie pellet, flake or actual vege plus goldfish specific foods. A few times a week add in some other specialty foods Repashy, frozen or live foods and then back to their veggies and goldfish feeds. 
If they are outside they’re eating algae’s, larvae and floating plants so it’s easier to feel good when I remember to feed them do it really well and heavy. We’re still pretty cold at night so when we eventually get summer for a couple weeks I’ll tend to feed them more often but still keep the feeds reasonably sane.