Powerfeeding fish with different eating habits and different digestiv systems in the same tank will never work that well. Some will go too fat including fat liver etc. and some will not use their full growth potential.
Speed up fish growth
- Thread starter SLS_23
- Start date
I agree with this. The bolded part in particular is all too often overlooked.
Especially if one's powerfeeding (because of the abundance of food), there is a lot of potential for herbivorous species to get their digestive systems messed up and/or become obese, as well as carnivorous species to become malnourished. Both from eating the food intended for the other.
One simple question that no one has asked.........Why?
Powerfeeding fish is not good for water quality, or for you trying to keep on top of water changes. But first and foremost it's not healthy for the fish. What are you trying to achieve?
Powerfeeding fish is not good for water quality, or for you trying to keep on top of water changes. But first and foremost it's not healthy for the fish. What are you trying to achieve?
You're Petenia is a piscivore (fish eater)
Your buttikoferi is a molluscavore (snail eater)
Your Vieja is an omnivore with a tendency toward being an herbivore (algae)
A good pellet with Spirulina should work for all, but that said, water changes tend to do more for growth than over feeding.
I like to change over 100% of a tanks water per week, in 40% increments every other day.
And agree with esoxlucius, whatever power feeding might add to growth, is usually negated by the degraded water quality it produces
My water changes keep nitrate at an undetectable level, and have never had slow growth yet I feed once a day for two days, and skip feeding altogether on the third.
Your buttikoferi is a molluscavore (snail eater)
Your Vieja is an omnivore with a tendency toward being an herbivore (algae)
A good pellet with Spirulina should work for all, but that said, water changes tend to do more for growth than over feeding.
I like to change over 100% of a tanks water per week, in 40% increments every other day.
And agree with esoxlucius, whatever power feeding might add to growth, is usually negated by the degraded water quality it produces
My water changes keep nitrate at an undetectable level, and have never had slow growth yet I feed once a day for two days, and skip feeding altogether on the third.
Thank you all for your answers. I want to speed growth of fish because I can place them in a large social aquarium with bigger cihlids. Fish fed mainly dried granules (HIKARI, SAK, INVITAL), frozen fish, worms. In the summer I add spinach, nettles and dandelions from the garden. The filter filters the entire aquarium 18 times per hour, so nitrates are immeasurable.
Unless you have NO3 absorbing resin or porous media for denitrifying anaerobic bacteria, filtration does nothing to get rid of NO3. What does is water replacements, fractionation/protein skimmer, very large mass of live plants compared to the fish, or all 3.
All standard filtration does is convert NH3 and NO2 into NO3.
Just give them a healthy diet, raise the temp to the high end of the fish’s range and do a lot of water changes
I find feeding frozen and live foods in combination with a staple various pellets with the aim to change 100% + of the water over a week period. Growth has always been quite rapid for me with this combination. There really is no need to power feed, just feed correctly with quality foods and also keeping water pristine. (New Life Spectrum, Northfin, Hikari etc) These are my go to for pellet foods.
Daily water changes of at least 40% will speed up growth dramatically.
Agree
It is well known that many discus breeders do 90% daily water changes to get maximum growth in order to bring juvie discus juvies to a sellable size faster.
