Your fish need a varied diet in order to be healthy and happy. Many flake foods are formulated to provide all the vitamins and nutrients your fish need, but variety will keep your fish happy!
Fish are cold blooded. They don’t need food energy to keep their body temperatures up like warm blooded animals do. Fish also don’t need food energy to stay afloat. This means that your fish can get by on a very small amount of food unless you want them to breed.
Fish feeding tips:
- Two or three small feedings per day is better than one large daily feeding.
- Only give as much food as your fish will eat within two minutes.
- Overfeeding your fish can lead to poor water quality. Uneaten food releases ammonia into the water as it decomposes, and can throw off your tank’s water balance.
- Overfeeding your fish can stress them.
- Overfeeding your fish can encourage unwanted breeding.
- An automatic feeder will dispense exactly the same amount of food at an interval you specify. These are very useful if you’ll be going away for a few days.
Territorial fish can monopolize a food supply; schooling fish are relatively good about sharing.
Bottom feeding fish may not get equal access to floating food like fish flakes. Starvation is a major cause of failure with bottom feeders like catfish and loaches. Don’t overfeed your tank in the hopes of making sure your bottom feeding fish get enough to eat! Instead, offer foods that sink like algae wafers and shrimp pellets. Try feeding your bottom feeders after the tank lights are out for the night — top dwellers will be less competitive then. Most bottom dwellers are nocturnal, and will be more active after the lights are out anyway.
Make sure all the sinking food is gone by morning, or you run the risk of overfeeding and your water quality can suffer.