Re: [GSAS-Member] Continuous Feeding?

[matt kaufman <igotadose@hotmail.com>]

I believe you'd get much more 'bang for the buck' in terms of growth and health 
of fish through continuous water change, rather than continuous feeding. If you 
need to dechlorinate or otherwise treat your water, this gets harder though it 
is solvable. Some of the killi keepers have very large fishrooms (full of small 
tanks like 10s and 20s) that get automated or nearly automated daily water 
changes. One article shows how to add a no-overflow (at least in theory) siphon 
system to a tank without drilling: 
http://www.aka.org/aka/modules/content/index.php?id=6

 

I've see the fishroom built around these tanks, and its quite successful, 
though not 100% automatic (it's daily and the owner usually is there to watch 
it to make sure there are no problems, but he's had a hiccup now and then.) 
Basically, with a few valves and an automatic controller, tanks are drained, 
replacement water pumped in, and new make-up water is set aside, which then 
gets treated by hand (dechlorinator, electrolytes, etc.)

 

I don't think anything other than filter-feeding fish (common in marine 
environments, not so common in freshwater) would benefit from continuous 
feeding. Especially in an amateur/home scenario where equipment is of widely 
varying quality and reliability.

 

Cichlids have a wide variety of feeding regimens, from pure carnivores to pure 
vegetarian and all sorts of specializations like mollusc eaters, insectivores, 
scale eaters, .. I doubt that in nature they feed continually, in fact it's 
extremely unlikely as they're quite territorial and some spend prodigious 
effort on building nests. When they're doing that, they're not feeding.

 

And on a side note, I've never had a hobby-grade auto feeder that worked well 
for a prolonged period of time. The least bad were the Eheim ones which have an 
electric motor, but even those got gunked up in the humid environment of an 
aquarium hood. I used them to feed multiple-times per day when I would have big 
spawns of interesting fish, and coupling that with nearly continuous water 
change, the effects were good but a lot of effort (you still have to siphon out 
the waste.) But, in my experience, fish fed the same amount in the same size 
tanks, the ones who get more water changes grow faster and are healthier.

 

 

 

 
                                          
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