How much should I feed?

Have been in saltwater for a while, but I am still not sure if I am overfeeding or starving my fish...Here is what I have in my 55:
2 percula clowns (one is 2 inch, one is 2.5 inch)
1 Bangii Cardinal
1 coral beauty 3 inch
1 yellow tang 3-4 inch

I have lots of kinds of food in hand, like formula 2 flake, freeze dried cyclopeeze, Rod's food, Hikari frozen mysis & spirulla brine, nori, NFS pellet...

I am not sure if I feed once a day, how much food should I throw in? How about a cubic of hikari frozen ones? Or should I feed less often?

Thanks very much for advices.

 

I feed daily but small amounts, I can not stand begging clownfish;D

One day pellets, next frozen ( Rods Food) and the next quality flakes.

Sounds like you have some good food choices already on hand.

 

Like said above. I would offer a small chunk of nori for the angel and tang though daily, thats my opinion, but every other or every 3rd day will suffice. Id say at least 3 times a week though.

 

ynzheng

I agree with the others
I would probably feed 1 cube of frozen to that many fish in 1 day
and in addition every other day I would probably make the nori available

I would feed less flakes, pellets by volume, as they are dried foods, and expand in water or the fishes stomachs and basically with those foods I add a tiny bit at a time and feed slowly making sure all that has been put in has been consumed before adding more
but the whole feeding period probably last 2 minutes at most.

Steve

 

Thanks very much for your advices. I think I might be not feeding enough right now... I usually put in around half a cubic per day... Cause I am afraid that food sink to the bottom will not be consumed..

 

Feed what your fish can consume in a few minutes without leaving left overs. then you know the jobs done.

 

I agree.....feed what they will eat in like 3 or 4 minutes

 

I feed about 5x a week, skipping a day here and there.
I have always been taught to consider a fishes stomach to be about the size of their eyeball so it gives you a good visual comparison and feed accordingly. I vary my foods between frozen Cyclopeze, frozen PE Mysis which is the staple food and flake spirulina algae with some occasional nori thrown in too.

I have had literally dozens of fish live over 7 years and several past 13 years with this method. My current Seabae Anemone was purchased by me in 1990 so is approaching 21 years old in my systems and doing well along with the clown who is 11 so I am not starving things.

 

The clowns don't really need to be fed specifically. They generally can find their own food as they will eat anything. Especially in an established tank. I wouldn't worry about feeding them at all. They'll get enough when ever you feed the other fish.

The tang (that shouldn't really be there IMO) needs daily nori or something. You can clip that on the glass.

The coral beauty - you need some food that has sponge in it. Just feeding it pellets and flakes won't cut it. It will die.

If you have food sinking to the bottom ("leftovers") you are overfeeding/feeding too fast.

Cubes need to be dissolved first in water. Don't just drop the cube in. Besides that, with those fish, a cube would last me 3-4 feedings.


You have a lot of fish in a relatively small tank. Stack on top of that any amount of overfeeding and it will be easy for the tank to get out of balance.

Make sure you have a good skimmer and a relatively large CuC. Particularly with cubed food, there is no such thing as the fish eating it all. This stuff breaks up in the water column and goes everywhere. Snails to the rescue!

 

I have some nice red sponge growth in my tank, but I never see my coral beauty touch it... My question is, do dwarf angels really need sponge?