How much to feed my fish for growth?? Feeding regime?

[THQ]

Hi all, I have basically a 6x2x2 180G with gold severum, heckelii, ellioti, elec blue acara, and will add an oscar and GT later on. They are all juveniles.

I am quite confused as to how much to feed them. On one hand I have heard the pros of "powerfeeding" so that they grow as fast and as big as they can. On the other hand, I have heard problems with bloat/constipation, unhealthy fatness, high waste output and thus lower quality which makes sense, etc.

It's a big tank and I'm doing weekly 70% PWCs and nitrates never go above 5 ppm, because the bioload from the juvies is still quite low. I will be able to keep nitrates down during this growth phase even if powerfeeding.

I feed them a rotation of high protein foods with some spirulina:
Dry: Hikari Cichlid Gold/Bio Gold +, New Era CA/SA Cichlid Pellets (50% protein), Fluval veggie pellets (mainly spirulina), Hikari mini algae wafers.
Frozen: bloodworms once a week
Live: medium mealworms twice a week.

I have found feeding actual veggies to be incredibly messy, so don't. I hate the noise crickets make.
I feed 6 out of 7 days as I have heard a fasting day is good for their digestive system, as their diet is very high protein. Due to work, I usually just feed once per day in the evenings.

I am unsure at what stage I am meant to stop feeding. I have always stopped before they did, because I was worried they might get sick. They always seem so hungry and fight over food despite me giving them what I think is already too much. I have heard varying things from "a fish's stomach is only as big as its eye", to "feed them only as much as they can eat in 30 seconds, or actually 5 minutes", etc, etc. I definitely feed them more than their eye size. I feed them in batches, waiting for them to chew/digest/rest between batches, rather than dump all the food in at once as it goes everywhere. So it's hard for me to gauge exactly how much time they're spending eating food, but the entire process doesn't take longer than 5 mins.

Can anyone give me some advice? I am looking for pretty fast growth to bulk up so I can get an oscar and GT in the tank. Thanks.

 

[Covetous]

I'm not an expert, but I feed mine once a day. Untill they don't look interested in the food, or they are just letting it hit the floor too much. I only add alittle at a time so it doesn't make a huge mess. So usually take about 5 minutes or so. But I don't time it or anything.

 

[dan518]

Growth and adult size comes down to genetics, good water quality and a decent diat, power feeding just results in fat fish, patience is the hardest part of this hobby, for me anyway,but to get big impressive adult fish something we all need.

 

[smitty03281964]

Feed several times a day as oppose to 1 big feeding. Feed just enough that it should be gone within 10 minutes.

 

[cichlidfish]

I feed every other day. I feed them once but slowly. First veggie foods like algae wagers and peas (not often). Then I feed pellets. Right after pellets blood worms or krill. But that is mostly for the tetras which are so much faster than the cichlids. They will take food from the mouth of the cichlids too!
Sometimes I have to feed at each end of the tank to ensure every fish eats. I make sure there is nothing left.

 

[Horsechick]

Wow, I feed 3-4x a day. Sometimes shrimp pellets, floating cichlid pellets, falling fry pellets, frozen shrimp, frozen bloodworms, tubiflex on a rare day. But yeah, pretty much every time I go to the tank they get a snack. They gobble it all up, I don't see much hitting the bottom, so I dont worry too much, but maybe I should? I don't stuff them and do skip a day here and there. They sure don't eat like my angels would. Those things gorged themselves, these guys seem pretty chill about food so far.