Feeding in a large tank

[nzafi]

I was wondering if anyone has any advice for feeding fish in a large tank. I recently upgraded from a 180g to a 535g (8x4) that is housing a single aimara wolf fish.

Long story short is that I hate doing tank maintenance so I try and minimize it. Careful feeding was key to me in my 180g. I feed on nearly a daily basis and was focused on massivore pellets (about 15-20). I would feed 1 pellet at a time to make sure all food is eaten, and then scoop any pellets he didnt eat (sometime 1-2).

This is a pain in a 535g tank. Stretching across a 4ft wide tank to scoop out excess pellets is incredibly annoying. I have started feeding shrimp soaked in vitachem as that is only 3-4 shrimp so it goes much quicker especially with him taking them down whole.

Do you other folks with large tanks go nuts over excess food? I purposely did bare bottom and right now have no decorations to make this easier, but its still a pain.

I cant imagine how folks with 10+ fish to feed and lots of decorations manage to deal with excess food.

 

[BIG-G]

You could try smaller amounts more often. To ensure that he will eat all the food at any given feed.

 

[celebrist]

I was wondering if anyone has any advice for feeding fish in a large tank. I recently upgraded from a 180g to a 535g (8x4) that is housing a single aimara wolf fish.

Long story short is that I hate doing tank maintenance so I try and minimize it. Careful feeding was key to me in my 180g. I feed on nearly a daily basis and was focused on massivore pellets (about 15-20). I would feed 1 pellet at a time to make sure all food is eaten, and then scoop any pellets he didnt eat (sometime 1-2).

This is a pain in a 535g tank. Stretching across a 4ft wide tank to scoop out excess pellets is incredibly annoying. I have started feeding shrimp soaked in vitachem as that is only 3-4 shrimp so it goes much quicker especially with him taking them down whole.

Do you other folks with large tanks go nuts over excess food? I purposely did bare bottom and right now have no decorations to make this easier, but its still a pain.

I cant imagine how folks with 10+ fish to feed and lots of decorations manage to deal with excess food.

I have a variety of different sized fish and multiple scavengers anything that gets past all of that gets eaten by the snails

 

[nzafi]

You could try smaller amounts more often. To ensure that he will eat all the food at any given feed.

Somehow I got a wolf that is lazy and doesn't really eat off the bottom, so my struggle is that if I drop a pellet in and he does not hit it right away it sits on the bottom. I have never left pellets in the tank more than 5min because of how soft and quickly the massivore breaksdown.

 

[esoxlucius]

If I had a huge tank like that i'd have a few strategically placed powerheads. That coupled with a good turnover of water volume and you'd never see any uneaten food or fish crap on the bottom of your tank, it would all get filtered away. My powerheads are on timers. They're off during the evening and come on intermittently during the day. Just make sure they're off when you feed, otherwise the food will get blown all over the place and some will get filtered out before the fish have had a chance to feed.

 

[nzafi]

If I had a huge tank like that i'd have a few strategically placed powerheads. That coupled with a good turnover of water volume and you'd never see any uneaten food or fish crap on the bottom of your tank, it would all get filtered away. My powerheads are on timers. They're off during the evening and come on intermittently during the day. Just make sure they're off when you feed, otherwise the food will get blown all over the place and some will get filtered out before the fish have had a chance to feed.

I have done this, but do you really want entire uneaten pellets to stay in the system regardless of whether it is in the tank or gets pulled into the filters?

 

[esoxlucius]

I have done this, but do you really want entire uneaten pellets to stay in the system regardless of whether it is in the tank or gets pulled into the filters?

I have surface, midwater and bottom feeders so uneaten food is very rarely an issue. If you have a single fish that won't eat off the bottom and the size of your tank makes it difficult for you to remove uneaten food then you need to get a suitably large and compatible bottom feeder. I don't see any other way. You could try feeding less so it's starving and gobbles everything up before it gets to the bottom. Or carry on as you are and clean out your mechanical everyday.

 

[Deadliestviper7]

Add a few huge apple snails and a couple potted aquatic plants, makes things easier