Do you feed frozen food in addition to or instead of normal daily feeding?

[Supermassive]

Lets say you feed your fish twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. If you are going to feed them frozen food would you replace one of their normal feedings with frozen food, or feed the frozen food in between their normal feeding so they would get 3 meals that day? I have been feeding 3 meals a day on the days they get frozen food.

I also have another question about feeding frozen food. I want to feed my fish both frozen bloodworms and frozen brine shrimp. Should I only feed them frozen 2 times a week total, so they get frozen bloodworms once a week and brine shrimp once a week about 3-4 days apart? Or can I alternate the food every 2 days so they get bloodworms, then brine shrimp 2 days later, then more bloodworms 2 days after that?

Edited October 14, 2023 by Supermassive

[nabokovfan87]

It definitely depends!

Sometimes you might be feeding frozen to a section of the tank and feeding another food to the other space on the tank. Some frozen foods float, some sink, and some like to sort of drift around the water column. 

On 10/14/2023 at 12:32 PM, Supermassive said:

If you are going to feed them frozen food would you replace one of their normal feedings with frozen food,

Yes. This is my normal method. I don't feed 2+ times a day. I will feed once a day, maybe even every other day sometimes... If they aren't showing real interest in food.  Sometimes I can feed morning and night and I will use that to condition the fish for breeding in particular.

 

On 10/14/2023 at 12:32 PM, Supermassive said:

I want to feed my fish both frozen bloodworms and frozen brine shrimp. Should I only feed them frozen 2 times a week total, so they get frozen bloodworms once a week and brine shrimp once a week about 3-4 days apart? Or can I alternate the food every 2 days so they get bloodworms, then brine shrimp 2 days later, then more bloodworms 2 days after that?

There's a few ways to view it. Something like bloodworms I've had issues feeding too often and causing some internal bloating and issues in the fish that way.  Brine shrimp I think you can probably feed it as often as you wish.  When I was trying to feed frozen very often I would do something like 40-60% of the meals from the week with frozen. The big thing is to make sure it's being eaten and that the fish are getting healthy, nutritionally balanced food.  I think the more we learn, the real advice has became to choose a handful of good foods and to rotate. So, let's look at a typical week and I'll give you an idea of two methods for feeding that might work for what you're trying to do.

Method 1: light-normal feeding supplemented with frozen

Day 1: normal dry food (AM+PM)

Day 2: frozen food day. One food AM, one food PM or a blend once a day. (It's ok if not all the fish eat during both meals due to preference)

Day 3: normal dry food

Day 4: normal dry food

Day 5: frozen food day

Day 6: normal dry food

Day 7: normal dry food

 

Method 2: "power feeding" for breeding

Day 1-7 (AM): Frozen food mix or feeding  in a rhythm. Supplement with any Targeted foods like algae wafers if need be.

(Rhythm being, 2 days of brine, then 1-2 days of worms, etc.)

Day 1-7 (PM): Dry food or gel food overnight

You can add a rest day every 3-4 days here too. The main thing is to make sure the fish are really eating the frozen food and to avoid overfeeding/excess rotten food in the tank.

It'll be interesting to hear everyone else's schedules and methods, please share if you have one!

Edited October 14, 2023 by nabokovfan87

[Supermassive]

@nabokovfan87 Thanks that was very helpful. I think I'll do the method 1 that you provided or something very similar.

[beastie]

It is sort of funny how this question made me realize for me normal food is frozen food and i sometimes supplement my fish with dry :))

I Feed almost exclusively frozen and sometimes live, if the fish are lucky.

i bought every frozen food there is ( and you would be surprised how much there is ) and feed something different every day.. except tubifex (once a month) and bloodworms (once a week tops).

I won't feed whole cube most of the time, just a third here a third there and mix and match.

[reefhugger]

@nabokovfan87 's advice is very good.    I'd like to add input from a struggling fish mom.

One fish keeping bad habit I've had to confront is overfeeding.  Honestly its fun to feed them, and they're always hungry (or so they say).  I think overfeeding has contributed to the  a terrible time I've had with with algae.  So I've gotten more disciplined (not my strong suit) about scheduling in no feed days and feeding smaller amounts.  I do feed Repashy foods to make sure the bottom fishes aren't solely dependent on pellets or flakes sinking to the bottom.  So far everyone seems healthy.  Sadly algae issues continue but are somewhat better.

[gardenman]

I just have one tank going currently with seven CPDs, ten cherry shrimp, and five mystery snails. With CPDs being small fish, they get frozen baby brine a couple of times a day, then some micro-pellets or finely crushed flake food in between. I just cut off a chunk of the small frozen baby brine cubes, thaw it out in some warm water for a few minutes, and dump it in. Overfeeding isn't really an issue with ten shrimp and five rapidly growing mystery snails. CPDs are browsers so you want to feed them small amounts fairly often. I try to do four to five feedings a day with at least two of those frozen baby brine shrimp. The frozen baby brine I'm using at the San Francisco Bay mini ones in the 36 pack. I use about a quarter of a cube per feeding and that's enough to feed the seven CPDs with plenty left over. One cube lasts two days that way and the fish seem happy and healthy with that schedule.

[Guppysnail]

Depends on my goal. If I’m conditioning to breed or growing out young the frozen would be in addition to normal feeding. If I’m just sustaining a colony it would replace a regular meal.