Does powerfeeding affect lifespan?

[JeBassMaster]

I've heard a lot that powerfeeding can hurt a fish's lifespan. Does anyone have personal experience of this and trying to maximize growth only to have your fish die early? Is there a way to powerfeed and maximize growth with the best available food/diet that could negate any health issues? Trying to figure out what safe limits are. Might be species dependent I guess but I feel like some things could be universally applicable with this.

 

[Midwater]

A hungry fish is a healthy fish.

Having said that, I have and sometimes do power feed fish, but not for long, a few weeks. I can help them get through a growth spurt to become stronger when mature.

 

[Milingu]

Doing it long-term or with the wrong type of food is definitely unhealthy and can even kill a fish. Over the last few years I've seen many fish with fat liver, too much fat around the guts etc. And not all were even power fed. Often too much calories and especially too much carbs is enough to cause a life shortening increase of body fat.

 

[triamond]

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) were used as an animal model, and they developed diabetes when overfed with Artemia.
Caloric restriction extends lifespan by modulating the TOR pathway (the discovery of TOR-related mechanisms was recognized with a Nobel Prize).

 

[Milingu]

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) were used as an animal model, and they developed diabetes when overfed with Artemia.

Central American cichlids also tend to get unhealthy fat around their organs when fed to long with only Artemia.

 

[duanes]

If you want your fish to grow quickly, instead of overfeeding, just feed normally and do more frequent, and larger water changes.
Watar changes will do more for growth than bloating them up to obesity with excess calories.
If you do one 25% water change per week, they will grow slower than a 50% water change per week, or slower that if you do a 100% water change per week by doing a 40% water change every other day or so, and they will be healthier than wallowing in growth inhibiting nitrate concentrations produced by waste build up from overfeeding.

 

[Cal Amari]

It's the same in fish as it is in dogs, cats, people, and every other living organism. Overfeeding leads to obesity leads to other health problems leads to death earlier than non obese animals. Few people will say it died too early because it was fat, especially with fish. But when an obese animal dies at 7 or 9 years or whatever, no one says it could have lived 3 more years if was a healthy weight. I use dogs as an example because I know more dog owners than fish keepers. The ones with round dogs who pass young are usually considered to have died from respiratory failure, or heart problems, or organ failure, or arthritis leading to impaired mobility leading to resiratory failure, etc. And the "long lived" dogs are different ages depending on size, breed etc, but the ones who say wow, she made it to fifteen, or seventeen etc, are never the round obese dogs...

 

[ShadowP]

I've heard a lot that powerfeeding can hurt a fish's lifespan. Does anyone have personal experience of this and trying to maximize growth only to have your fish die early? Is there a way to powerfeed and maximize growth with the best available food/diet that could negate any health issues? Trying to figure out what safe limits are. Might be species dependent I guess but I feel like some things could be universally applicable with this.

Powerfeeding absolutely can affect your fishes lifespan. Many Tetras are notorious for gobbling down flake food as fast as they can and this results in the food not having absorbed enough water before they eat it! The result? The flake food continues to absorb water and expand while in their stomach and the poor little gluttons literally burst open and DIE! I only ever had the displeasure of seeing this happen once. Fish are cold blooded! Feed accordingly! Most fish that are always slightly hungry will live longer because they are always looking for food and therefore always alert and getting exercise. Rapid growth is more a product of highly nutritious foods with high levels of protein and much less a product of how much they eat. It is far far better that fish eat less more often than more less often. Your water parameters will also be more stable when you feed less.

 

[jjohnwm]

Not sure about fish bursting open from overfeeding, but I have definitely seen fish suffering discomfort after a big feed of freeze-dried tubifex. Aggressive eaters gulp their food down the instant it hits the water...or before!...and then that food absorbs water once in the gut and expands to easily 2 or 3 times its dry volume. Freeze-dried stuff is the worst offender in this regard; this property of FD foods is useful when you want the fish to ingest some medication or vitamin substance, as the food can be soaked in it and then fed conveniently to the fish...but it's not a good thing when they eat so much they can't move properly.

I'm embarrassed to admit that after decades in the hobby I had never considered doing a necropsy on a dead fish, until I joined MFK and read about thebiggerthebetter doing so regularly. Since then I always do it; haven't found one of my sparsely-fed fish with fatty deposits, but have seen them occur in several fish belonging to friends who were notorious overfeeders. It doesn't take a medical degree to recognize the problem when you see it, just as it shouldn't take an in-depth clinical study to tell you that "power-feeding" is unnatural and unhealthy. You undoubtedly know people who are into powerfeeding themselves; how healthy do they look?

It's especially sad when we read about folks who insist upon crowding their tanks with fish that simply are not compatible, either because of aggression or predation. Many such folks think that keeping their fish heavily overfed solves this problem. Apparently, "obese and inert" is the new "healthy and happy" in their eyes.

 

[neutrino]

Besides some of the good points already, if you look into the science, "power" feeding is a misguided concept. Better to consider optimal feeding, including not just the amount, but the quality and digestibility of protein sources as part of the big picture for both growth and health-- including water quality and not stressing or overcrowding your fish. One reason not to power feed, as most people think of it, is that each species has an optimal range of feed and protein intake for optimal growth and health. The studies done demonstrate that exceeding this decreases feed efficiency, produces more waste, and actually results in less growth.

You can find and do some reading on this, but to boil it down to a simple, concise, and important statement, typical of the results of these studies: "A significant decrease in the body weight was observed with protein level around 50% due to the animal limitations to use the protein and their reduced feed efficiency." (http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0122-02682011000200003)

From another study-- http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0122-02682011000200003
Optimal protein percentages for best growth rate in some species (either lower or higher hinders growth):

The CP requirement for H. severus fingerlings and juveniles is similar to species of the same family (Cichlidae). The CP requirement for Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus, larvae and fingerlings, was 45 and 35%, respectively, providing the highest weight gain values and specific growth rate (Abdel-Tawwab et al., 2010). Angelfish, Pterophyllum scalare fingerlings and juveniles showed best weight gain and specific growth rate when fed diets containing 34 or 32% of CP (Ribeiro et al., 2007; Zuanon et al., 2009).

Aside from protein amount, lower quality protein requires higher feed intake, higher intake equals wasted energy and higher waste production:

On the other hand, fingerlings and juveniles fed diets containing protein levels higher than the requirements also showed high feed conversion, since there was an extra energy expenditure for the deamination of surplus amino acids, which increased considerably due to these amino acids being gluconeogenic and ketogenic. Thus, the use of high levels of protein in the diet turned out to be unfeasible, both economically (Jobling, 1994) and environmentally, since it increases the excretion of nitrogenous compounds in the environment.