Can you feed to much?

[rodalan]

My mother has a 55g tank with 7 different African cichlids. They are all small, no bigger then 2 inches. i dont know breeds because it was from an assorted tank from petco. i told her she could through some roman lettuce in there to make sure that the older ones didnt hog all the food. she said that they devoured it. can they eat themselves to death or fill themselves and neglect there flake food? if they do neglect the flake food will they lose nutrition, therefor only should be fed veggies from time to time?

 

[electric eel]

you never want to feed more then they will eat in a few minutes and definitely not enough that there is uneaten food lying about in the tank.ad konings recomends only feeding adult malawi cichlids every second or 3rd day i think but you could feed more often then this just feed small amounts.the only time i would recomend heavy feeding is to help cut down on aggression.controlled overfeeding and controlled overcrowding i think its called on www.cichlidrecipe.com which by the way would be a better site to answer some of your questions or www.cichlidforum.com.this site is mostly for softwater dwarf cichlids an entirely different animal.hope this helps somewhat.

 

[tjudy]

In nature one rarely sees a fat fish. Healthy fish usually have slightly concave bellies... Lean and mean!