When To Cut Down

[32flavors]

I have 2 beautiful orandas, one of which has gone through the entire learning process with me. Since they were small and I have time for the extra water changes I have fed them 2x daily so far. They are each now a little over 3 inches from the nose to the base of the tail. When is it a good time to cut down their feedings to once a day? I also have a 1/2 inch rescue that I feed small amounts about 5x daily right now since she is so tiny. I assumed since she is tiny that she needed to be treated almost as a fry, but for the other 2, would it be good to take away that extra feeding now?

[lynda441]

Well, yeah, they should probably be cut down to one feeding a day. And so, like the saying goes, there's no time like the present. The worst part is not them. They'll survive. It's you. Us. How do we resist those faces looking out at us? I might suggest something like this. Make that feeding you're going to cut out all fruits and veggies. That's good for them, it's good for their digestion, but it won't bloat them up, they'll think they're getting fed and they won't make you feel so guilty. Make the pieces fed smaller and smaller. Then skip a day for a while. Then skip two days, etc., etc. They'll slowly get used to not having the food around at that time of day.

[daryl]

Depending on age, at 3 inches, a fish is basically an immature juvenile at 3 inchs. Mine hit that at about 8-10 months of age - and still need extra protien for development of muscle, wens, etc. Instead of just cutting down to one feeding you may wish to adjust the type of food you are feeding. You can go to one meal a day - but make it heavy on the protien mostly - like bloodworms or such every other day and a good Wen growth Hikari food the others.

Or, if you wish, make the "second" feeding green. Culture some greem fuzzy algae in the back/bottom of your tank for grazing on demand. Clip a blanched broccoli flowerette or spinach leaves to the tank for a good snack.....