How much do you feed your fish?

[Drstrangelove]

Ok, my betta is about 2-3 inches, my gold dojo loaches are 4 inches, my albino red tail shark is 4 inches, my gold nugget pleco is 4 inches, my green phantom pleco is about 5 inches, my tetras are 2 inches, my danios are 1 inch and my barbs are 1 inch, my kuhli loaches are 3 inches, I'll start doing more frequent water changes, when I feed them it just seems like not a lot of food.

So, that works out to roughly 180-200 grams of fish. Depending on temperature and remaining growth, they will need a minimum of 3 grams net dry weight (35% digestible protein) per day. I have no idea how much net dry weight you'll get from each cube, nor how much is digestible, so that's another issue.

To account for more growth, I'd target something around 5 grams per day and re assess in a few months. However, since a fish that doubles it's length increases it's food requirements by many times over, it's important to re assess if fish start looking thin after growth.

You'll have to convert the cubes into net dry weight to determine the proper number per day. This of course is ball parking and the fish can be fed every other day (twice the daily amount) or every three days (three times the amount.)

 

[skjl47]

nitrates become an issue at around 400 or so

hello; While I have read this sort of thing before I do not subscribe to it. We each get to run our tanks any way we wish so I will drop the matter.

betta is a female with shorter fins so I don't think that's really much of an issue

Hello; Yes a female betta is not at issue.

Everything is doing perfectly fine so

hello; Good enough. My suggestion is to consider Drstrangelove's take on the feeding and good luck to you.

 

[white specter crayfish]

So one to two cubes a day? The cubes are 2.8 grams each, and without the water it'd work out at about 5 grams.

 

[Drstrangelove]

Yes, that would be my estimate based on the data you provided. If that doesn't ring true for you than something got lost somewhere in the conversation or my math.

 

[white specter crayfish]

Ok thanks, may I ask how’d you do that because I want to own my fish store and think that’ll be helpful to know

 

[Drstrangelove]

https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/ammonia-produced-by-x-pounds-of-fish.692825/

Most of it is here in this 3 page thread. What isn't there is the conversion of your fish length into a useable fish weight. In that case, you can use any of several online fish weight calculators that let you input length, girth and fish type.

Here's one: http://www.fishdreams.com/calculator.all_species.html


In the calculators, length and girth will give you weight, so, length and weight must also give you girth, if one has the same species. From this you can take known published metrics (fish weight, fish length which are posted online), then extrapolate backwards to the weight of the same species, but at smaller sizes.

Type can then be generalized to fish body profile (pikes, catfish, etc.) where no records exist.

The caveat is we don't know if the "record" fish was pregnant, had just feasted, starved, migrated, etc., so this is a directional, not a perfect extrapolation. Also, if a fish changes dramatically as it grows, (for example, getting disproportionately heavier) as they grow, then this will tend to overstate the size of the smaller fish, but the amount will be off by grams, not pounds.