How long can my Senegal Bichir fast?

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ThePlanesMaster

Feeder Fish
Jun 10, 2016
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So I have a 6-6 1/2 inch Senegal Bichir living in a well-established 55 gallon tank. How long should this guy be able to survive without being fed? For context, I have quite a few other fish (I ensure it's not overstocked), but this Bichir is the only purely carnivorous fish I have, so he won't eat the flake food that I put in an automatic feeder. I normally feed him once a day, but should he be fine for a couple weeks? I don't really want his pellet food to clog the feeder, thus causing everyone else to starve if he would have been fine anyway. Thanks!
 
I would assume he'd be fine for a couple of weeks but he may try and eat your other fish
 
You can put pellets in th auto feeder. That should solve that.
 
What other fish you have in the tank?
The only fish that would be a threat to being eaten by him are 6 zebra danios, which I know he's eaten 3 of them before, so I wouldn't put it past him to eat any or all of the rest of them. They're a little more expensive than typical feeder fish, but they're still only like a dollar, so I wouldn't mind too badly if they got eaten.

And kno4te kno4te I would like to do that to be safe, but like I said before, I wouldn't want to pellets to clog the feeder. I could break them up a bit, but at some point the pellets might be too small to be interesting to the senegal. I will try with the pellets in the feeder, but I was really just curious of how long he would last if that didn't work.
 
I think even small pellets will interest the senegal. The smell from massivore and their good sense of smell will be like a magnet.

But I got what your saying. No worries.

It'll be fine for that long.
 
Healthy bichir can last for weeks without eating, but the problem is, if they dont get full from the pellets, most likely the will target zebra danios, and sometime bichirs will eat a much larger fish than them if given a chance.
 
Alright, thanks everyone. I've been reading these forums for a long time, but I just haven't posted on them or used them until now, so it's really nice to see that the community seems to be fairly pleasant and knowledgeable at the same time.
 
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