Feeding schedule...

I know that most seem to agree that if you leave for vacation for a week that the fish will survive on those missed meals without much issue. Fish in the creeks and ponds that don't live off of plants must eat opportunistically so that may be random. I don't know if that means every day or or every few days. Don't know if there are any studies on this. So, the question is, once captive, what is everyone doing for a feeding schedule.

I have been feeding twice a day just because I wanted to give the fish something to look forward to in their new restricted living space. And, to acclimatize them to captive living as quickly as possilbe. They have done that very well. I just want to know what others are doing to compare. Once a day? Once every other day? Twice a day?


Usil

Edited by Usil, 29 September 2011 - 07:05 PM.

How often I feed them depends on the type of fish and my goals with them.

I've been feeding the Elassoma worms either once or twice a day. In the afternoon/evening, I feed them worms, they eat them, their bellies get really full looking, and they stop being able to eat any more. They'll sit there with one hanging half in and half out of their mouths and not be able to eat another bite, but not be willing to let go of that last bite. I do this every evening, and I check on the shape of their bellies in the morning. If they're super fat and look full still, or if I'm late for class, I skip the morning feeding.

The Elassoma fry I give continuous food by adding microworms to the tank. They stay alive and wiggling for 1-3 days underwater, which gives the fry something to eat whenever they're hungry.

My guppies I feed basically continually. Every few hours, a little dash of crushed flake food. The reason why I feed them so often is because:
1. The adults don't eat their babies if they're full.
2. The babies grow better if they've always got food available.
It usually ends up being about five or more times a day for the first week of guppy life (when there are newborn fry in the tank), and about three to four times a day for when there's just adults in the tank and fry too large to be eaten. The guppy tank's dense live aquarium plants serve the dual function of being a nitrogen sink and sheltering fry from their parents. The plants grow very quickly in this setup because there is a lot of nitrogen available for them to grow.

For my trichopsis pumila, I feed it about once every other day. I probably should feed it more frequently. *shrugs* It's an anabantoid. They can survive in something like a vase, with no water flow and very little movement on their part. So its metabolism is very different from my guppies, which are always moving and playing and growing. It just sits there, chillin'. So I feed an amount of food that is proportional to its activity level.

Edited by EricaWieser, 29 September 2011 - 07:39 PM.

I understand the schedule for the species and juveniles you keep. It makes sense.

In the wild, it is probably not so simple. Lots of different conditions exist at various times of the year that the fish contend with, so, probably not exactly comparable relevant to what we choose to do in captive care. And with the many different species there are probably variances there too. I just want them to be healthy and not stressed about food so I feed then twice a day. They are always ready for it and in fact, every time I come in and sit down in my home office they are eager and willing. I think the food drive is their chief motifation at this point. But - I can say the same for my dog and 28yr old Yellow-naped Amazon who yells at me when I miss her feeding schedule by 10 minutes. (and it is not a bird yell - she says HEY!, HEY! over and over again.)

On the other hand, the vet said my bird and dog were over weight and I honestly thought I was feeding them correctly. I have cut way down on their food and they have adapted well. The Amazon gets 8 pellets in the morning and 8 at night when she used to have a full bowl all day so she can eat when she wanted.

As I have grown fond of my fish I would like them to live a long life but not sure what that would be in captive care.

Usil

Edited by Usil, 29 September 2011 - 09:03 PM.

What sort of fish do you have? Some fish have tiny stomachs and must forage throughout the day, but most of our natives are not built like that. Adult fish, except the tiniest species, do not need to eat every day. I've pretty much quit keeping fish, but when I had my native tanks set up I fed them two or three times a week.

I don't know how well documented it is in fish, but studies with rats and various herps have shown that a barely-adequate diet greatly increases lifespan over a rich diet- even when the rich diet is still well short of causing obesity or its related problems. Of course, growth is slower in the less-well-fed specimens; I would guess that reproduction would be reduced as well.

My fish are probably young adults. Two Longears, one blugill and one hybrid between a green and a red ear that has very interesting markings. You can see them if you look at my fish tank cam.

http://71.170.193.21...ndex.html?cam=0

I have a couple of juveniles in the tank but I feed them 4 times a day with crushed up food. Everything has grown noticabley in the past two weeks and have good color. All look and act healthy.

Usil

(and it is not a bird yell - she says HEY!, HEY! over and over again.)

If my smallmouth bass could yell at me when he's hungry, I don't think it would be that polite. Depending on my work schedule, I feed him once or twice per day. If I feed him twice, I try to cut the amount in half so he's eating about the same amount every day. I don't think I've ever filled him up, but I usually feed until the aggression is noticeably less. When I'm feeding him crickets, I'll stop shortly after he becomes a little timid about taking them from my fingers. With the first few crickets, I often get bass lips up past the second knuckles on my fingers. Sometimes I feed until his vertical lines and spots start to fade, which tells me the aggression is diminishing.

Steve.

Frogwacker has a good point; aggression really does affect the feeding schedule. They say that people are more likely to riot and tear down their government when they're hungry. Hungry fish get angry, too. If you've got two fish that are this close to tearing each other's throats out anyway, and then you don't feed them for a bit too long... well, once my Dad had two piranhas. Then he forgot to feed them, and he had one.

And Newt's point that some species eat very infrequently, sometimes only three times a week, well, that's true too. If you're a top tier predator and you kill two or three prey a day, soon you don't have any prey left. Most animals that are pure carnivores can handle going a few days without meat. Snakes, alligators, lions, all of these animals hunt only every few days. Snakes can do fine eating once a week. The lower tier food chain animals, though, like bunnies, they are grazers and they need food all the time. I had a friend who kept bunnies and I asked him about his feeding schedule once. He told me that the bunnies needed to have food continuously, and if they ever went more than a couple hours too long without food, it could mess up their digestive track. So the feeding schedule really depends on what tier in the food chain your fish is. For example, goldfish are such grazers that they don't even physically have stomachs. They ideally eat all day long.

And the eating habits change as the fish ages. There are some species of pleco that eat wood voraciously when they're little, then all of a sudden when they're adults they don't need wood anymore and eat plants. Or they'll eat other fish (meat!) when they're young and switch to a vegetarian diet when they're adults. I don't keep plecos, but I remember being at an OCA meeting and hearing the speaker talk about one species of meat eating pleco, and how much fun it had in the community tanks of people who assumed that all plecos were herbivores.

Anyway, diet and feeding schedule depends on your fish. You wouldn't want to feed guppy fry twice a week with quarter sized chunks of beefheart, and you wouldn't want to feed a fully grown bass every few hours with a half teaspoon of baby brine shrimp. Tailor the feeding schedule and food fed to the type of fish.

Edited by EricaWieser, 30 September 2011 - 07:55 AM.

my feeding schedule had to do with what fish again. Darters were fed twice a day. Madtoms once a day(well night) and years ago when we could legally keep sunfish, we would feed them like cichlids, once every other day. The darters were always important to get feeding because to me, it seemed like they could quickly go down hill without feeding regularly.

I work with sunfishes extensively and intensively.

Larvae fed with maximum interval between feedings of 6 hours with 1 hour intervals between 0800 and 1700. Fry are transitioned to feeding regimens usually involving automatic feeders applying feed either for 24 hours or 12 hours of day. Bigger fish get shorter feed application period.

Once average total length exceedes 3 inches, fish are not fed on Sunday and when hand fed, fish are not fed on Saturday afternoon. This results in a pattern of feed application where animals go without for about 48 hours each week. As far as we can tell, growth is not compromised by this regimen and health may even be improved. This should be taken in the context that the dried feeds / pellets used by most are very nutrient dense (lots of protein and energy) that typically results in fish that have a lot more fat in muscle and belly than wild fish do. Fish pushed to grow on salmon and trout diets for extended periods seem to die for problems assocaited with the liver. Feeding less seems to increase lifespan of sunfish fed such feeds.