Overfeading birchir?

[David R]

I recently purchased a small tiger dat to keep with my palmas. I've been feeding the birchir beefheart, prawns, shrimp pellets and bloodworms, he's a real pig and eats until his stomach bulges. Usually I'd wait a day or two until he's back to normal size before feeding again, but I'm having trouble getting the dat to eat and the birchir is making the most of all the extra food. I'm having a hard time trying to balance things, getting enough food to the dat without over-feading the birchir. Is it going to cause any problems by not letting his stomach 'deflate'??
Thanks

 

[piranha45]

The only fish specie I've ever heard of eating to death is redtailed catfish. If a bichir actually did it, it would definitely be a first I think.

 

[Koji]

Once my endy swollowed a rather big catfish which suppose to be it's tankmate and ended up having a bloated tummy for 2 full days.

 

[WckedMidas]

keep feeding a plump him up

 

[dragonscale]

I also have bichirs. I think you should go slow with the beefheart as it's not as easy to digest as the other types of food that you have. I do have a friend who pumped up his endlicheris with beefheart. They're around 16" in length now, and about 2.5" thick in diameter. You might also need good filtration as beefheart is on the messy side and can make your water smell.

 

[M|L]

I hand-feed all of my fishes, shouldn't be hard to hand-feed your bichir and datnoid.

 

[Wisdom16]

I wouldn't worry about it. He swhould stop when he gets too full.

 

[bsplenden]

Don't worry about that. Give the Dat some time to get used to the new environement. Once it settles in, it should eat much faster than the birchir.

And it is ok to overfeed the birchir IMO. Just have a filtration system to cope with the extra waste. They get lazy to hunt once they get bloated.

 

[rayman45]

WHEN U FEED YOUR FISH UGH CAPs

i use a bbq stick and make sure all my fish eat
try it, if you can get the food to stay on the stick(shrimp krill maybe beefheart etc)

 

[armed2teeth]

Do you have access to live feeders? If you do Im sure the dat will get his share before the palmas does. Also the dat should be able to get floating pelets before the bichir does.