How do you feed your fish & clean up.

[georgedv]

Fish keeping 101.
I am curious to know how you feed and then maintain your tanks clean from left over food. I am up to 22 tanks. I have a wife, a 3 year old and another on the way. The glory days are just a memory. Time restrictions are getting imposed.

If I cut down on tanks, that means I would have to get rid of some fish. I have spent too much time getting them and setting them to do that. Besides...NO WAY!!!

Do you use feeding circles, siphon off after every feeding, small but numerous feedings per day, place food in the same corner each time...etc. Are there any better types/brands of food that require less feeding or give you more flex. regarding cleaning schedules. Anything you can think of is welcome.

g

 

[apistobob]

www.dwarfcichlid.com/Good_food.php

 

[tjudy]

Sounds like your system overfeeds a bit. If there is uneaten food that needs to be cleaned up after a feeding, feed less. Adult dwarf cichlids need surprisingly little food to thrive. Growing fry, quickly, is a different issue.

I prefer to use live foods whenever possible and feed in a way that disperses the food through the tank. That way the subdominant fish will get some too, and all of the fish will search for food like they would all day long in the wild. If I have them, I like to add foods that will stay alive in the water for a while, such as daphnia. White and grindal worms will live for a day or so. Black worms will live forever unless they are chopped.

A great food source for hunting dwarf cichlids is shrimp. I have started keeping small colonies of cherry shrimp in the tanks. I see lots of shrimp carrying eggs, but the population does not increase very much. This tells me that the shrimp fry are getting eaten... fine by me.

 

[georgedv]

Sorry for not getting back sooner. Thanks for your input. I think my question was not posed correctly. I am more curious about techniques and other ideas for feeding & min polluting the water. Example would be Teds' mention of keeping cherry shrimp in some tanks. That is a simple idea, many of you use, but I did not...so now I am getting some cherry shrimp. I now have some Amano shrimp, Ted, can I achieve similar results with them?

Also, brands of flakes/peelets/frozen food, how often, any special way you feed your fish to min. waste and water pollution. Does any one use sinking pellets? I have only found Hikari brand around here, but they are not readily accepted by my Pelvs. What kind of foods, from your experiences, do you find Apistos, Mikrogeophagus, Pelv, Nannacars....etc to prefer.

Any special diets (foods) that help enhance the color of the fish...
Any special diets (foods) that help get fish to breed...

I hope this thread will develop into a source for us to share feeding ideas that will result (mostly for us Dwarf Cichlid newbees) into healthier and beautiful fish.

 

[creighton]

I'm not really sure if you can get similar results with Amano's. The fish may eat the discarded eggs, but Amano's need brackish water to breed.