Feeding fish properly is vital for aquarium safety. One of the most common mistakes any new aquarist makes is the tendency to overfeed their new fish right from the start.
As mentioned in Tip 1 of the Water Series - The Importance of Water, always remember that fish live in a completely different environment from humans. Their entire physiology is alien to ours in a number of ways. This has a major impact on their nutritional needs and how they should be fed during their lives.
One of the primary reasons for feeding fish differently than you would feed yourself is the fact that they do not regulate the temperature of their body.
Their body temperature is virtually that of their surrounding environment, in physiological terms, they are coldblooded, or poikilothermic. The importance of this fact is the simple truth that we use approximately 85% of the nutrition we ingest and process to produce our body regulating heat.
Since fish are poikilothermic, that is something that fish do not require. Because of this basic physiological difference, they need much, much less food than we as mammals require to stay in proper health.
Unfortunately, new aquarium owners often are feeding fish exactly as they prefer to eat, three times a day; usually as much or more often even more than they can eat at the feeding.
In most cases, the fish should only be receiving the same amount, often less, but only once a day! During the next couple of video tips we will explain why this overfeeding is such a serious mistake.
Overfeeding the fish in such a way often leads to serious health risks over time. The most important is that any food that is left over after a feeding remains in the tank - and will rot. This causes the release of a number of compounds that are not healthy for them.
The fish cannot simply pack up the decorations and move out should the water become overly polluted from wasted fish food.
Besides getting the fish fat, feeding fish too much will add lots of nutrients into the ecosystem that must be processed and broken down. In overfed conditions, the fish are unable to eat all the fish food that the aquarist provides.
If the filter does not catch them immediately, which is quite common, these leftovers find their way to the bottom. They gradually work into the gravel substrate and decay there. Couple this with the fact that their wastes, even if they have been able to eat all that was offered, also drop into the substrate. Some will pass right through the relatively inefficient digestive system.
Granted, bottomfish and scavengers may be able to able to eat and process some of this. But, rarely everything that is dropped is eaten. Bacteria then must process the leftover garbage during the breakdown and decay processes in the tank. As a by-product, they will manufacture ammonia and nitrite. Neither is healthy for the habitat.
Other ingredients from the food dissolve directly into the water itself. These solubilized nutrients offer other, normally invisible, inhabitants of the aquarium, the food they require to grow and prosper as well.
This microscopic life includes suspended bacteria and single celled plants, called algae. In large enough quantities, a bacterial or algal "bloom" can be caused from these excess dissolved nutrients being too abundant. This can create cloudy or green water conditions.
Always remember, the aquarist is solely responsible for anything that is added into the aquarium. The fish are completely dependent on the fishkeeper for their life requirements - nutrition, filtration and such.
When too much food is added, the tank will become polluted. This can be avoided by an aquarium that is well maintained through partial water changes using a gravel cleaner to eliminate these waste build-ups before they become critical.
Proper regulation of food input is one of the most important skills a new aquarium owner can learn. That and to get over the tendency to treat the fish as if they had exactly the same requirements as humans.
Treating fish as if they were human can be one of the most dangerous activities that can occur in the life of a fish.
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