To Feed or Not To Feed

[MitchM]

Right, starving fish and not feeding fish are 2 different things.

If you notice that your fish are thin, and there is little natural food for them to eat, then feed, but if there is plenty of algae and bugs for them to eat, let them eat that first, before you add any required supplemental food.
Your pond will stay cleaner that way.

 

[Smaug]

Don't fool people into thinking there is that much natural food in most garden ponds. Mine has some algae on the sides and whatever bugs fall in,it woukdnt be enough to sustain even my comets. None of my neighbors with the half dozen or so ponds woukd be self sustainable either. No way I'm stressing my fish by not feeding them.

 

[MitchM]

I'm not trying to "fool" anyone.
I'm just trying to get people to think about why they're feeding their fish.
Are they feeding solely because they enjoy the interaction with their fish? If so, then be prepared to provide the extra filtration required in order to prevent algae overgrowth and also have a plan in place to deal with fish overpopulation problems.
There are many instances where fish are not externally fed in ponds and the fish lead happy and healthy lives.

 

[Meyer Jordan]

Don't fool people into thinking there is that much natural food in most garden ponds. Mine has some algae on the sides and whatever bugs fall in,it woukdnt be enough to sustain even my comets. None of my neighbors with the half dozen or so ponds woukd be self sustainable either. No way I'm stressing my fish by not feeding them.

Want more natural food sources in your pond.....turn off the UV!!

 

[DrCase]

I have flock spawns a time or 2 each year in one of my ponds and I just let them eat all the eggs, no one starves
Very few eggs make it , the few days it takes to hatch

 

[addy1]

Lol chasing = no feeding = egg eating

 

[EricV]

I'm looking for a little advice. I've got a container pond with 3 small (2-3" without the tail?) Shubunkins. I've been feeding them once a day. The five minute advice seems to be not very useful because these fish are very shy. What I put in for them is about 3 or 4 small (2mm) pellets every morning. While they are getting better, they do not come rushing in for the food and in the 5 minutes they might eat a pellet or two each. But the food is all gone 30 minutes later (it floats).

So after all of that, "Am I overfeeding?"

I've got another container pond with about 15 rosy reds in it. They go crazy for the food (less than one pellet per fish) but since they are too small to take a whole pellet, they nibble at it. Again, they don't finish in 5 minutes.

(The two ponds will be combined into one soon; they are separate for quarantine reasons.)

 

[Meyer Jordan]

Here is an excellent article about feeding Goldfish.
http://www.puregoldfish.com/feeding/

 

[bettasngoldfish]

My fish are only eating a very small amount of wheat germ food at the moment. They do not have their normal appetite yet as it is still a bit on the cool side. Once it warms up and stays that way they will be fed more food.

 

[EricV]

Sorry, should have specified. These fish are currently indoors, so temps are above 60.

 

[cas]

Here is an excellent article about feeding Goldfish.
http://www.puregoldfish.com/feeding/

oh-oh. And all this time I thought I was feeding on the light side. Food is gone in less than a few minutes, but I think they are getting more than a couple of pellets each. Good article.

 

[CeeJayH]

Here is an excellent article about feeding Goldfish.
http://www.puregoldfish.com/feeding/

Good article, thanks for the link.
I've always assumed that in a well-established natural pond with plenty of plants, there would be enough to eat. We feed a few pellets in the evening just to get the fish to come to us so we can see them. It's an opportunity to give them a casual look over to check they're healthy. They don't look thin or underfed, and the plants aren't disappearing because they're being consumed. Fish in the wild survive without some-one throwing handfuls of pellets into the water.

 

[addy1]

Nice to know I am not starving my fish...............they have plenty of plants, get a few pellets now and then, I leave the pond "dirty" enough there is good stuff in there for them.

 

[EricV]

Here is an excellent article about feeding Goldfish.
http://www.puregoldfish.com/feeding/

That was a useful article for its generalities, but pretty worthless on the amount of pellet food to feed. Sure, lots of info on watching the fish but he also quotes pellets/fish. But pellets/fish tells you nothing without specifying the size of the pellets and the size of the fish. A 10" fish is 125x the mass of a 2" fish. A 4mm pellet is 64x the food of a 1mm pellet.

 

[Meyer Jordan]

That was a useful article for its generalities, but pretty worthless on the amount of pellet food to feed. Sure, lots of info on watching the fish but he also quotes pellets/fish. But pellets/fish tells you nothing without specifying the size of the pellets and the size of the fish. A 10" fish is 125x the mass of a 2" fish. A 4mm pellet is 64x the food of a 1mm pellet.

This is true. The correct rule for amount of food per day is % of fish body weight corrected for fish size and temperature. Much as the chart in my article by the same name "To Feed Or Not To Feed".