Can you over feed your fish?

J

j_sinclair

AC Members
Mar 20, 2006
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My fish seem to always eat when ever I feed them. I only put in as much as they will eat (just a pinch of flakes), but everytime I add another pinch they eat it all up. This will go on for 5 or 6 pinches until I finaly stop, even though they want to keep eating more. Not much food falls to the bottom with out being gulped up, so I don't wory about decaying food (plus I vacume once a week or so). I feed them at least 3 times a day.

My questions are, are fish like dogs? Will they eat themselves to death? I don't want fat, unhealthy fish, but I don't want starving fish either.

Also....Should I be feeding my fish only one type of food? I have a dwarf gourami, 2 pearl gourami's and 3 zedra danio's, they all eat the TetraMin tropical flake like it's going out of style. But when I feed them the Aquarian tropical floating pellets (which has a picture of a gourami on the package) they don't eat it. Should I stick with flakes only or should I try something else? Live food maybe?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
 
Yes. You can overfeed your fish. Yes, its bad for them.

Fish are cold blooded. They don't keep their body temp 25˚F above ambient. They need a lot less food than we do.

They also don't eat regularly: they're starvation feeders who will just keep eating as long as there is food. This behavior is based on the idea that food is scarce and unpredictable… if food is plentiful and predictable then its a recipe for disaster. Don't believe the fish: they don't understand the game.

As much as they can eat in 30 seconds, skip a day or two a week, never twice in a day.
 
carpguy said:
Yes. You can overfeed your fish. Yes, its bad for them.

Fish are cold blooded. They don't keep their body temp 25˚F above ambient. They need a lot less food than we do.

They also don't eat regularly: they're starvation feeders who will just keep eating as long as there is food. This behavior is based on the idea that food is scarce and unpredictable… if food is plentiful and predictable then its a recipe for disaster. Don't believe the fish: they don't understand the game.

As much as they can eat in 30 seconds, skip a day or two a week, never twice in a day.
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great advice!
 
Ok Iv heard that story before; but Iv always wondered…
In the wild if a fish stumbles on a BIG food source; like say a big dead thing, I have a hard time believing the species would survive it the fish ate till it died…
Any ichthyologists out there care to weigh in?
 
Fish will eat until they are sick and can die from eating too much(I've seen it happen).

Most Big fish (larger than 8") can go a week with no food with no health problems, but some small fish won't live five days without food. In the wild, many small fish look for food all day, but don't find much. My point is that most small fish (smaller than 5") eat many times a day in there native habitat, but in very small amounts. I fish a lot, and the fish bite mostly in the moring and evening, thats twice a day.

You can't feed fish based on a time limit. Some fish eat very slow and other eat quickly.
 
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I feed my fish a little bit at a time...a few small portions back-to-back until I feel they are still just hungry enough to search for and clean-up any scraps that may have settled around the tank. It's better not to allow the fish to gorge themselves on a daily basis.
 
carpguy said:
Yes. You can overfeed your fish. Yes, its bad for them.

Fish are cold blooded. They don't keep their body temp 25˚F above ambient. They need a lot less food than we do.

They also don't eat regularly: they're starvation feeders who will just keep eating as long as there is food. This behavior is based on the idea that food is scarce and unpredictable… if food is plentiful and predictable then its a recipe for disaster. Don't believe the fish: they don't understand the game.

As much as they can eat in 30 seconds, skip a day or two a week, never twice in a day.
Click to expand...

Dead on.

Fatty liver disease is a common problem for fish. As Carpguy said, they are cold blooded and don't need a whole lot of energy to keep their temperature up. I about one medium size flake per fish 3 times a day, and skip a feeding here and there and skip a day here and there.

Its best to feed all sorts of different things. Different brands, flakes, freeze dried blood worms, tubifex worms and brine shrimp, algae waffers, bottom feeder tablets, and cucumbers.
 
It is not true that small fish cannot live 5 days without food. Tanks can easily go for a week without any feeding without any losses whatsoever. Large fish can go much longer without feeding. Newly hatched fry cannot go long with out eating.

Overfeeding is the commonest insult to FW tanks.
 
My fish have repeatedly gone for over a week without eats and I've had zero losses from doing this. And I have small fish.

Fish in the tropical wild are different from fish in the temperate wild, but either way their food supply is likely to be seasonal: insectivores aren't eating the same all year round. There's a period of time when there's larva in the water, lots of insects around and there's a period of time when there's not. Piscevores eat when they can and it may not be every day. When you're out there fishing all summer long the fish might be feeding well, twice a day, but what are they doing all winter? Not eating as much…

Overfeeding is much more common than underfeeding.
 
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