Feeding small pellets to big fish

KingOfKings55 said:

I tried 6.5mm with the biggest group (10-18"), but seemed to go thru it even faster trying to make sure the slower fish got enough.

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I don't know how to interpret this. It seems like it means that the fish eat more food with the 6.5mm and are are eating less food with the 3mm. Unless you know their size and actual rate of consumption you may be under feeding them.

Naturally, one can say, who cares? It's not necessary to fast track your fish growth and it may well be harmful health wise. I support that view, but you want to make sure all your fish are getting a reasonable amount of nutrition. You will just want to observe the fish and make sure that they are growing reasonably well and especially not stopping all growth or even signs of malnutrition.

Why can't you mix the large and small pellets when you feed?


So to answer your question, the only reason not to offer "only" small pellets is if it means the larger fish will not be getting adequate amounts of nutrition. Eating twenty 1 gram pellets per day is not the same as eating five 8 gram pellets.

don' t forget , and you probably haven't.. you can always break up bigger pellets for small fish

I mix mine. I mix the Mega 10mm with jumbo and large.

Most of my larger fish will only eat the 10mm pellets. Only a few sift the sand for the smaller pellets.


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Pacus are voracious eaters. They can eat ALL the food. In our tank, the 3mm pellets sink to the floor as debris. My pacu don't consider it food. You might trying feeding the pacu first. After a big dinner of grapes or something, perhaps it will be less inclined to eat all the pellets. One of my pacus is quite a pig and tries to eat everything. I have two lids ajar and give him a bite square and while he is eating, I drop food for the other one. At their last feeding, Leonardo still managed to get five out of the first six food drops. Before this, it took two people to feed the two fish--my husband held Leonardo away with a big net while I fed Adonis. You are either going to have to restrain the pacu or get really clever in your feeding if you want the other fish to eat.

When you pacu gets big, you might try feeding big chunks of food. This is what I feed mine. They don't bother chewing. They just swallow the chunks whole.

Special brownies ^^^ lol

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nope, no problem.

I am estimating that you have 7+ lbs of pets in the tank (Pacu is ~5.7, the rest each just under 1 lb.) Daily dry weight food for good but not forced growth would normally be around 70-105 grams a day (2-3%), with 2% being a nice target.

A maintenance amount (to cover just activity and no growth) would be around 35 grams (based on studies most adult fish can maintain at around .75% dry weight to gross weight at tropical temps (~78 F). You're probably making up for a lot with the bananas and shrimp (after conversion to dry weight), but it's hard to tell how much. If you were hitting 10 grams with pellets, but 35 grams overall, then the difference is 175 grams dry weight a week. For reference, that could be 3 bananas and 18 of the 40-count shrimp.

Whole shrimp are 40% dry weight, and so you can do the math depending on which size you purchase. E.g., the 40/lb are 11 gram gross each-which is 4.5 dry. I don't know the weight of the 6.5mm as they would vary by brand, so I can't tell you exactly what the effect will be by stuffing pellets into the shrimp or banana. An average whole banana is 120 grams gross (31 grams dry.)

As a side note, the most cost effective sizes for pellets are typically 4.4-5 kg, not the smaller sizes. Not sure if that will help much, but long term it might.


I haven't kept any pacu (yet!), but they are highly vegetarian. You could probably toss in banana, strawberry, brussell sprouts, cherry tomato, apples, carrots, etc. and the other fish would ignore those. Could help (maybe) if he has eaten a lot before feeding the others, or you could float those on the other side of the tank while he is busy.