Fahaka ?s

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My little Mbu seems to know when he is full and will not eat anymore....my Fahaka would kill herself from eting too much LOL. I feed everyday though, although not a lot. Like one whole frozen shrimp, or one clam on half shell ect, ect.
 
yeah, it seems to me like the best way to feed them would be to mimmick their eating shcedule in the wild. small amounts throughout the day. why would it be beneficial to change that?
 
^ Coz they need time to digest their food which is why some people only feed their fish every few days rather than every day... or some even feed every day and skip weekends... just depends on the individual keeper...
 
MyFishEatYourFish;5030739; said:
yeah, it seems to me like the best way to feed them would be to mimmick their eating shcedule in the wild. small amounts throughout the day. why would it be beneficial to change that?
What makes you think that's how they eat in the wild? Fish in captivity ate easily killed by our kindness of overfeeding--to obesity, fatty liver & early death.
 
well in the wild they wouldn't have a food source that appeared on schedule throughout the week. they would be constanly foraging eating little bites at a time, and only rarely finding big meals. and if you feed them big meals, yes they need time to digest. but if you constantly feed them small amounts the digestive system is always running at say, a 3, instead of runnning full blast 3 times a week. every digestive system ive heard of(im a biology student), except for animals like big cats, is meant to run at a slow and steady pace, and runs much better that way. even our digestive tracts are meant to run like that.
i dont mean to argue with you guys, i just want to hear the reasoning behind these answers, cause they dont make sense to me.
 
MyFishEatYourFish;5031500; said:
well in the wild they wouldn't have a food source that appeared on schedule throughout the week. they would be constanly foraging eating little bites at a time, and only rarely finding big meals. and if you feed them big meals, yes they need time to digest. but if you constantly feed them small amounts the digestive system is always running at say, a 3, instead of runnning full blast 3 times a week. every digestive system ive heard of(im a biology student), except for animals like big cats, is meant to run at a slow and steady pace, and runs much better that way. even our digestive tracts are meant to run like that.
i dont mean to argue with you guys, i just want to hear the reasoning behind these answers, cause they dont make sense to me.

I would not question puffer punk. She knows her puffer info.

NO animal is the same, so that would account for their digestive system as well.

I find that feeding every 2-3 days works for me.
 
Eating the foods they like is really hit-or-miss. They typically gorge themselves when they come upon an available source of foods & then go through a starvation period until they come upon another source.
 
Pufferpunk;5031805; said:
Eating the foods they like is really hit-or-miss. They typically gorge themselves when they come upon an available source of foods & then go through a starvation period until they come upon another source.

hmmm that makes a lot of sense. i wish there were articles about fahakas in the wild. ive searched quite a bit and can only find out about them in the aquarium.

to me it still seems like they would be foraging throughout the day though. their diet consists of things like snails, crabs/crayfish/shrimp, clams, small slow fish, and probably aquatic insects. all those things are small, but numerous. and i cant think of any sources that would come in large sparse amounts in the wild. also, their physiology suggests, to me, that they forage. they are relatively slow, especially compared to any fish that would be considered a large meal, they have small mouths made for taking bites out of and crushing things, and they are not especially camoflauged like other predators. also, there diet suggests slow steady eating. if they were to totally gorge out on a pile of clams or other organisms with a shell, that amount of shell would reek havoc on their stomach, possible causing impactions. but their ability to eat what seems like their own weight in a single sitting, does suggest, occasional gorging.
so i would theorize that they continually forage throughout the day, eating small things like snails and clams, but when something big and meaty comes along, they have the ability to take advantage of it and hog out, on something like a dead fish.
another question ive been meaning to ask. when puffers puff, what are they inflating? is there a dedicated puff sack? or do they inflate their stomach? because if its their stomach they inflate then the ability to eat tons in a sitting could just be an evolutionary twofer, and they may not have evolved the gorging ability for food reasons.
again, im not arguing, just questioning :)
 
^ Interesting theories you got there which have now got me thinking too...

Although i can't really contribute much to it... i can say when they want to move, the little buggers can move HELLA FAST!!!

I once accidently freaked my fahaka out when she was still small around 4.5" - 6" from walking past my tank in the middle of the night and she darted from one end of my tank to the other in literally no time...

So i guess if they have to they can move pretty fast, just that they probably prefer to lounge around and enjoy life? possibly coz they have the defense mechanisms they have? i.e. Puffing up and the Toxins in their system?
 
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