On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 16:42:44 +0000, Commander Vimes
wrote:

Hi all,

I am new to tropical fishkeeping and have found this group an
invaluable source of advice whilst cycling my 10g tank.

What I have noticed in all the books and posts I have read is the
warning of not overfeeding the fish. Is this purely to do with the
nitires that are produced as the food breaks down, or are there more
sinister things I should be wary of.

Also I can find no decent advice on how much is too much. I have 3
dalmation mollies, 3 neon tailed platys, 3 red mickey mouse platys and
3 neon tetras (3 died during the cycle - should have read the
newsgroup before trying to cycle a tank with neons!). I feed them
flake food and I am sure I have a tendancy to overfeed as I keep
feeding until they seem to become dis-interested in the food. There
are no flakes left over (that I can see), althoughn this doesn't mean
that there aren't small bits in the tank or hitting the gravel.

You are over feeding as far as I am concerned. My fish are always
hungry. They would eat far more than they need. What they eat comes
out the other end adding nutrients to your tank.

One rule I use as a guide is to feed what they can eat in 2 minutes.
I tend to think that is too generous. I feed only flake food. I
watch the fish when they eat and feed until the initial frenzy slows
down. This does not take long, under 2 minutes. In my 75 gallon tank
I have 60 fish of different size and that feed at different levels. I
put about two large pinches in all at once so that some of the food
does reach the lower depths. I have lots of scavengers to clean the
bottom. I also have a heavily planted bottom to absorb the nutrients
that follow from the feeding.

I know I over feed from time to time, so I force myself to skip meals
if I think the tank is looking a bit milky. I know the fish can
survive without food for a week (as told by others) and personally
have left my fish for two days in the dark with no food. Under
feeding is just not a problem for most of us, is my belief.


If someone could tell me roughly how many flakes to throw in the tank
I would appreciate it. I also tend to crumble the flakes up a bit to
ensure even distribution of the food.

Another reason I think I'm overfeeding is the water tests show small
levels of nitrites (0.1mg per), but this may be beacuse I added the
platys a couple of weeks ago and the bacteria is building up to meet
the new levels.

Anyway, any advice on this would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,

Vimes