Hello; Been thinking on this for a while and a thread about the death of an Oscar brought it to mind again. Not clear how to frame the comments but will start this way. Plenty of us appear to think excess uneaten food in a tank is problematic. The excess food decays and adds decay products to the closed system. We do not have test kits for many of these decay products so some of us use what we can test for as an indicator. That being nitrates.
Another thought has been occurring to me. What if we add too much food to a tank but all the food is actually consumed by the fish with almost nothing left over to rot. My personal notion has been that having food pass thru a gut is preferable to just decay (rot) in the water.
However I have noticed over the years that fish in a tank will eat many times a day if we choose to feed them. This may be a positive in terms of growing fish to a larger size but are there down sides to such frequent feedings? My unscientific thoughts of late is yes there are some downsides. I have gone to moderate feedings once a day with a few fasting days every week or so.
Since we mostly have small tanks of water compared to wild conditions I kinda figure it can be hard to keep good water quality if we feed all the fish will eat even if they swallow all of it. I also have to a degree begun to figure that stuffed fish may not be any more healthy over long terms that obese dogs or cats.
May be little of merit in these ideas so will welcome negative comments as well as supportive ones. Just feel free to chime in if you wish or ignore if a waste of time.
Another thought has been occurring to me. What if we add too much food to a tank but all the food is actually consumed by the fish with almost nothing left over to rot. My personal notion has been that having food pass thru a gut is preferable to just decay (rot) in the water.
However I have noticed over the years that fish in a tank will eat many times a day if we choose to feed them. This may be a positive in terms of growing fish to a larger size but are there down sides to such frequent feedings? My unscientific thoughts of late is yes there are some downsides. I have gone to moderate feedings once a day with a few fasting days every week or so.
Since we mostly have small tanks of water compared to wild conditions I kinda figure it can be hard to keep good water quality if we feed all the fish will eat even if they swallow all of it. I also have to a degree begun to figure that stuffed fish may not be any more healthy over long terms that obese dogs or cats.
May be little of merit in these ideas so will welcome negative comments as well as supportive ones. Just feel free to chime in if you wish or ignore if a waste of time.
