After discussing this with members at the UK MFK meet, I thought I would pose the question:
What do you guys think about power feeding?
I notice a fair few people in the forums advocating power feeding to beef up various individuals, but in my knowledge of fish keeping, over feeding has always been the easiest way to get unhealthy fish, scrappy tanks, and numerous other problems.
This normally comes about with excess food being left around the tank - however we, as monster fish keepers, know that with our monster fish, they would simply eat, and eat, and eat, and eat....
With a lot of fish (shovelnoses, for instance) they eat until bursting, and get those comically large bellies. The reason they eat like this, is that in the wild it may be weeks until they get another meal. Now most MFKers seem to have fairly regimented feeding schedules, which would obviously, again, go against the natural feeding regimen that the fish would have.
We are a community of monster fish keepers, so we are all aiming towards the huge. We do however generally give the fish more food, and better food than they would get in the wild. I think this could conceivably accelerate growth rates etc - so that our monster fish could actually get OVER posted wild fish sizes.
Any thoughts?
What do you guys think about power feeding?
I notice a fair few people in the forums advocating power feeding to beef up various individuals, but in my knowledge of fish keeping, over feeding has always been the easiest way to get unhealthy fish, scrappy tanks, and numerous other problems.
This normally comes about with excess food being left around the tank - however we, as monster fish keepers, know that with our monster fish, they would simply eat, and eat, and eat, and eat....
With a lot of fish (shovelnoses, for instance) they eat until bursting, and get those comically large bellies. The reason they eat like this, is that in the wild it may be weeks until they get another meal. Now most MFKers seem to have fairly regimented feeding schedules, which would obviously, again, go against the natural feeding regimen that the fish would have.
We are a community of monster fish keepers, so we are all aiming towards the huge. We do however generally give the fish more food, and better food than they would get in the wild. I think this could conceivably accelerate growth rates etc - so that our monster fish could actually get OVER posted wild fish sizes.
Any thoughts?
