Should I get rid of my ember tetras

[beastie]

So, for the past 2 years I have had in my 360 liters around 50 ember tetras. I added in span of half a year or more by 15 and there have been some deaths, so my guestimate is, I have around 40 now

Other inhabitants from the beginning were hatchetfish, sterbai corydoras, bamboo shrimp, for past half a year a group of 18 rummynose tetras and 5 bolivian rams.

The problem is feeding. The corydoras, now the bolivian rams too and the hatchetfish are slow eaters. I have to feed in various zones, floating for hatchets, falling down for corydoras and rams. In order to effectively feed the whole tank, I have to overfeed a smidge, mostly because of the tetras. Be it rummynose or embers, they will gobble up the food on the surface, they will catch all in the middle of the tank and then they will swoop down to the substrate to eat the sinking food.

Most of the embers are fat, like super fat, especially females. They suffer from internal fat, I have at least 5 that are staying at the surface, gasping for air, almost bloated ( but not) from how fat they are. The rummynose, why also large, do not suffer from the overfatness, because they are active swimmers, zooming from one side of the tank to the other. The embers just sit and get fatter. The overfeeding also causes me to do more often maintenace and overall is not the ballance I wanted.

Would removing the embers help with the feeding of the other fish?

 

PS I feed once a day, one day in the morning, the next day in the evening to make larger breaks between and I have at least one, but more often two feeding day breaks in the week.

[Zac]

On 8/22/2023 at 3:48 AM, beastie said:

So, for the past 2 years I have had in my 360 liters around 50 ember tetras. I added in span of half a year or more by 15 and there have been some deaths, so my guestimate is, I have around 40 now

Other inhabitants from the beginning were hatchetfish, sterbai corydoras, bamboo shrimp, for past half a year a group of 18 rummynose tetras and 5 bolivian rams.

The problem is feeding. The corydoras, now the bolivian rams too and the hatchetfish are slow eaters. I have to feed in various zones, floating for hatchets, falling down for corydoras and rams. In order to effectively feed the whole tank, I have to overfeed a smidge, mostly because of the tetras. Be it rummynose or embers, they will gobble up the food on the surface, they will catch all in the middle of the tank and then they will swoop down to the substrate to eat the sinking food.

Most of the embers are fat, like super fat, especially females. They suffer from internal fat, I have at least 5 that are staying at the surface, gasping for air, almost bloated ( but not) from how fat they are. The rummynose, why also large, do not suffer from the overfatness, because they are active swimmers, zooming from one side of the tank to the other. The embers just sit and get fatter. The overfeeding also causes me to do more often maintenace and overall is not the ballance I wanted.

Would removing the embers help with the feeding of the other fish?

 

PS I feed once a day, one day in the morning, the next day in the evening to make larger breaks between and I have at least one, but more often two feeding day breaks in the week.

Could you provide an image of the fish?

You could always put a tank divider in as a temporary solution

Edited August 22, 2023 by Zac

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2023 at 2:48 AM, beastie said:

So, for the past 2 years I have had in my 360 liters around 50 ember tetras. I added in span of half a year or more by 15 and there have been some deaths, so my guestimate is, I have around 40 now

Other inhabitants from the beginning were hatchetfish, sterbai corydoras, bamboo shrimp, for past half a year a group of 18 rummynose tetras and 5 bolivian rams.

The problem is feeding. The corydoras, now the bolivian rams too and the hatchetfish are slow eaters. I have to feed in various zones, floating for hatchets, falling down for corydoras and rams. In order to effectively feed the whole tank, I have to overfeed a smidge, mostly because of the tetras. Be it rummynose or embers, they will gobble up the food on the surface, they will catch all in the middle of the tank and then they will swoop down to the substrate to eat the sinking food.

Most of the embers are fat, like super fat, especially females. They suffer from internal fat, I have at least 5 that are staying at the surface, gasping for air, almost bloated ( but not) from how fat they are. The rummynose, why also large, do not suffer from the overfatness, because they are active swimmers, zooming from one side of the tank to the other. The embers just sit and get fatter. The overfeeding also causes me to do more often maintenace and overall is not the ballance I wanted.

Would removing the embers help with the feeding of the other fish?

 

PS I feed once a day, one day in the morning, the next day in the evening to make larger breaks between and I have at least one, but more often two feeding day breaks in the week.

If you havent already, drop a bottom dweller wafer for cories and rams at the same time as you feed the embers. The embers should prefer going after the food near the surface that you give them and that should give the other fish time, also in my experience aggresive eating tetras don't much care for those wafers.

[Littlefish]

Sounds like a great group of fish if you can feed all of them.

[beastie]

On 8/22/2023 at 9:22 PM, Gannon said:

If you havent already, drop a bottom dweller wafer for cories and rams at the same time as you feed the embers. The embers should prefer going after the food near the surface that you give them and that should give the other fish time, also in my experience aggresive eating tetras don't much care for those wafers.

I already do that, I also will put dried food on the top, frozen cube on the top, frozen cube for the bottom or a wafer. Still the embers could benefit from like a two week feeding hiatus. I will try a picture, but I did this exercise back in winter, I moved the ten fattest to a different tank, fed sporadically, magic in three weeks, normal looking fish

I just cant feed lower volumes as that would impact the other fish. And btw rummynose are visious, they will take the waffer from the bolivian ram, they will tear vegetable pieces to shreds...:) Maybe I have pirhannas 

 

[nabokovfan87]

For the hatchets, maybe using a feeding ring and a floating food makes it easy for them.

For the ram and the corydoras they have feeding tubes that you can use as well as a feeding dish if you want. That makes it very easy to spot feed them.  I use a piece of vinyl tube and use that to spot feed my shrimp and it works just fine. I've also seen people use spare cuts of PVC for the same purpose.

On 8/22/2023 at 11:38 PM, beastie said:

I just cant feed lower volumes as that would impact the other fish. And btw rummynose are visious, they will take the waffer from the bolivian ram, they will tear vegetable pieces to shreds...:) Maybe I have pirhannas 

I have a similar issue with my swordtails in the big 75G tank. Let's say I feed a repashy or I feed out some wafers, the corydoras take a little time to get food. The otos act similarly and I rarely see them eating with the mass of other fish. Simply put, I will take a wafer and break it to pieces or use multiple pieces of repashy.  I spread them out so the swords can find some food and then I'll go ahead and feed the corydoras and other fish their portion. Everyone has their zones and for something like my swords and some of your fish.... They don't have a boundary and it's just something to work around and resolve.

It's tricky, but there is a way. There are some tips and tricks.

On 8/22/2023 at 11:38 PM, beastie said:

I will try a picture, but I did this exercise back in winter, I moved the ten fattest to a different tank, fed sporadically, magic in three weeks, normal looking fish

That's unfortunate. 😞 They don't know their own limits. Hm. Maybe there is a way to control the size of the food and they get a lot of bites in but not necessarily a ton of volume.

....

Back when I had the barbs it was a similar issue to what you're experiencing. A very high energy fish and some that were much lower energy. Ultimately it does make it difficult if the feeding response of one fish is harming another. Maybe the ram in particular can be fed with a feeding tube in a corner of the tank somewhere, but let's dive into some tricks.

Among the barbs themselves some of the "runts" or fish lower on the totem pole had issues getting food. I would try to find those fish before feeding much of anything just to have an idea of where to drop food. Start by sprinkling a very small amount to get the groups attention and then sprinkle food directly to those fish. Yes the group would go and get a bit of that food, but they couldn't get everything.

Having a floating food can be slightly difficult to find.  I've had so many foods that say floating, but don't. I have had one food that said semi-floating and it wouldn't fully sink for days (some would, most wouldn't). I have had food labelled as semi-floating that sinks right away. It's a bit of a mess and there's not much to clarify it until you try to feed that food.

One other trick is to make a mix. Have some flake (floating food) as well as something like small pellets (or granules) for the bottom feeders. This is similar to a set of foods that Sera makes where they add a bunch of things in a treat mix. What will happen when you feed is that some drops and some doesn't and the dispersal gives time for all levels of the tank to feed at once and hopefully have a better time trying to get food. Powdered foods are great for semi-floating and floating foods.

Rams love to take their time eating. Wherever your ram likes to hang out, hopefully there is a bit of an area where you can spot feed and give it a chance to get food easily. Corydoras will handle what sinks at the bottom and they should be able to handle the rummynose doing there thing. If you don't have success with it, then you can feed the corydoras after lights out and that should give them a slight advantage to get some food in.

If nothing works, then maybe it's best to remove the off-energy fish feeders and try to have a less stressful setup when it comes to managing that food response.

On 8/22/2023 at 12:48 AM, beastie said:

The rummynose, why also large, do not suffer from the overfatness, because they are active swimmers, zooming from one side of the tank to the other.

Very interesting. Maybe their energy level helps or they have a lower fat % food. Even something like omnivore vs. Protein based foods could be the culprit. Hopefully there's some improvement soon for you with regards to the over eating/bloat.

[beastie]

On 8/23/2023 at 9:49 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

Rams love to take their time eating. Wherever your ram likes to hang out, hopefully there is a bit of an area where you can spot feed and give it a chance to get food easily

I sort of have five rams, two pair up quite regularly, I am going three months in with eggs, wigglers, fry, nothing, eggs, wigglers, fry, nothing, rinse and repeat, so while they do sort of hang at certain spots, breeding behavior changes that a bit. They are surprisingly mellow though, I was more affraid. They do not have issues swimming up the 60cm water column to the surface to eat though. I honestly do not know what the hatchets eat or dont eat, but I feed what I feed, I use frozen food, dump it unthawed to the tank, where it floats on the surface and they can eat it. I honestly can only say what they dont eat ( no to live bbs, no to live mosquitos, but then again ,they might have caught it, if someone else didnt eat it first) but they have been alive for nearly two years some of them (some of them jumped out, like yesterday during a water change I had to race my dog to not eat the hatchetfish that jumped out of the tank to the ground. Miraculously, it is just fine after I returned it to the tank and then I had nightmares about it all night long). I crush bug bites to fine powder or use some baby food that floats for the hatchets occasionally.

 

I will try to mix and match, but I feed mostly frozen/live lately, so that one ALWAYS reaches the embers and hardly ever reaches anyone else. I also do have the corydoras in the breeding cube now, so they are easier to feed up. I love feeding my fish, but they would not benefit from being fat :)))

[Tanked]

On 8/22/2023 at 3:48 AM, beastie said:

Would removing the embers help with the feeding of the other fish?

The obvious answer is yes.  Removing the Embers will help, but so will a fasting day.  Instead of moving the fish, I would try the feeding ring suggestion first.  If you can get the majority of Embers to feed in one corner of the tank, you can sneak food in on the opposite side.

[TOtrees]

Can you tell us what foods you are feeding? 

I have a similar setup and my approach is to intentionally feed food that is larger or smaller than the preferred "bite" size for the piggies. So something like the large size vibrabites for the bottom feeders (or carnivore discs), and a finer powder (almost fry food), for the uppers. I like the 200-300 golden pearls for this, and also community crave crumbled to fine powder in my fingers. And don't feel like you have to feed all 'levels' every day. Eg one day feed only the powder up top. Some will reach the bottom and those guys will get a snack, if not an entire meal. Next day feed only the larger pieces for the bottom dwellers. As they eat it, some will break up and float around and the upper fish will get some. Also, on days when you're feeding the bottom dwellers, feed at or after lights out. The cories are active at night, the uppers less so. 

[beastie]

On 8/23/2023 at 4:23 PM, TOtrees said:

Can you tell us what foods you are feeding?

From dried: Dennerle CrustaGran, Fluval Bug Bites, hikari mikropellets, seran vipa baby, sera vipachip, two other algae wafers of local brand ( I didnt mention I have 7 otocinclus there as well and 4 or 6 amano shrimp, same size as the otocinclus, will include a picture), recently bought vibrabites, didnt try those yet, hikari cichlid gold (dont like the balls, even presoaked they dont fall down, why?). Recently I bought repashy super green, fed it once to this tank near dark, not sure who ate it. I also have dried bbs, dried daphnia and dried cyclops which I would sometimes presoak and feed, but not too much.

I mostly feed frozen, cube a day of bbs, cyclops, daphnia, mosquito larvae, once a week I would add to this one cube a half a cube or full of bloodworms. I also hatch bbs every 3 days for other fish, so live leftovers, microworms, live mosquitoes. I also have frozen tubiflex but no idea if I should feed or not. I sometimes combine dried and frozen, sometimes just feed dry ( but like once a week), mostly feed frozen.

 

I am so open to some schedule or way how to mix and match. 

Grain size-wise, smallest is sera vipan baby, then hikari micropellets, fluval bug bites, dennerle crustagran, cichlid gold, any wafer

 

[TOtrees]

On 8/23/2023 at 11:06 AM, beastie said:

Grain size-wise, smallest is sera vipan baby, then hikari micropellets, fluval bug bites, dennerle crustagran, cichlid gold, any wafer

Thanks for this, because I’m not familiar with some of the specific foods you use. In my recommendation above, where I’m talking about smaller powdered foods for the upper level feeders, I would say that even the hikari micro pellets you’re using are on the large side. I’m not suggesting they’re not suitable for the fish you have, but as you’re experiencing, it’s difficult to avoid over feeding while ensuring everyone gets some.

 Powder foods like golden pearls and finely crushed flake will keep the attention of the upper and middle level feeders for just as long as something like the micro pellets or bug bites. In other words, they can eat that food for just as long or even longer without eating as much actual food. Make sense?

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I usually can drop Repashy past my various tetras. They will eat the bits that may float off of it on the way down, but once it hits the bottom they lose interest and the slower eaters like my Bolivian ram and my snails can get the food.

[nabokovfan87]

On 8/23/2023 at 8:06 AM, beastie said:

hikari cichlid gold (dont like the balls, even presoaked they dont fall down, why?)

Run a test where it is crushed into bits and see if it sinks.  If that works, then you can use a pepper mill to feed it out.

They have floating and semi-floating versions, probably just need to get the other one.  I think it's in the bottom left of the bag.