Power feeding.
- Thread starter JDCHSFB69
- Start date
Power feeding is usually frowned upon in the hobby, and salt is not usually needed unless of illness.
Feeding grow outs you could probably get away with two times a day provided they have had time to digest the previous feeding properly.
I myself have fed my fish twice a day until they put on some size, until I feel as they can get by with one meal a day. For ex. My last RD, I fed twice a day until 4" then went to once a day.
Ultimately, quality food and clean water will result in a healthy growth rate.
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Feeding grow outs you could probably get away with two times a day provided they have had time to digest the previous feeding properly.
I myself have fed my fish twice a day until they put on some size, until I feel as they can get by with one meal a day. For ex. My last RD, I fed twice a day until 4" then went to once a day.
Ultimately, quality food and clean water will result in a healthy growth rate.
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You didn't say what type of food you're power feeding. Flakes really aren't power feeding IMHO. High quality pellets, frozen live foods, to me would be power feeding. If you are power feeding change at least 50% water a week. BTW, I wouldn't say it's why the fish died. Sometimes purchased fish have diseases we never know about till it's over.
If you keep up with water changes, power feeding would be fine. But IMO, I feel that the more frequent water changes is going to help you grow the fish more than the food. With all the intake, and no real exercise, I'd think your fish would get fat(obese) if anything.
Regardless of tank size, the likely culprit of the death of your festae is poor water quality. Cichlids are notorious for being sensitive to water quality. Some are more sensitive than others (my German blue rams are pretty sensitive to even small changes in the water quality) but water changes are a cichlid keeper's best friend. Flakes deteriorate much faster than other foods to a point where fish won't take it. So it just sits in the water or filter and fouls Up the water. If you are feeding flakes 2-3 times a day, you need to be doing at least one 50% water change per week, preferably two 30% changes to keep water quality from fluctuating too much.
And I agree that flakes aren't really power feeding. You will get much better results from a quality pellet fed twice daily. Most fish keepers feed New Life Spectrum brand and swear by it, but Hikari is a good brand from my experience. I feed my grow outs a small flake meal in the morning. It too is a high protein flake, but I am only feeding it because I needed it to crush and feed my baby angelfish. Once its used up, they will be strictly on pellets along with my young rams, severums and keyholes. I feed all my fish except my angels (still too small to take anything bigger than flakes) a pellet in the evenings with frozen blood worms and/or brine shrimp as treats. The goal for me is not to power feed so much as allowing them to get use to a varied diet.
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Increase you water changes to at least 50% every week, switch to a high quality pellet sized appopreatly to the fish your feeding ie. no crushing and blowing out the gills and reasearch the nutritional requirements of the species in question. Most cichlids are omnivours and high qualty pellets like NLS, Extreem, Hakari (Bio Gold+) are excelent staple diets. Over feeding is unhealthy to the fish and the envoronment their kept in.