How much food does a 1.5in ocellaris clownfish actually need? XD

[Azedenkae]

I feed my clownfish New Life Spectrum Thera-A, the pellets barely fit in my occy's mouth, but it is fine chewing on it and eating it.

The actual issue is that my occy is super lazy and would only ever eat anything that wanders right in front of its face. It would not even move an inch to grab food. =.=

My other larger clownfish is a voracious eater and gobbles up A LOT of food. So I don't want to overfeed it lol.

I never ever had to think about this before because I never had such a lazy fish. So yeah, I guess it is finally time to ask. How many NLS Thera-A pellets does a 1.5in-ish occy probably need to eat each day? Pellet size is between 1-1.5mm.

 

[UkiahTheTurtle]

I would say about 2 - 3 pellets a day fish don't need to eat a lot of food also you clownfish might be more inclined to eat if it was frozen food

 

[Born2beblack]

Honestly i use to use that pellet and my clowns loved it
But i had to soak it in garlic additives.
Theyll eat anything with some of the garlic on it.
If i dont use that they only eat flakes, frozen or alive. I manly do meaty food now to control nutrients better.

He may just not like it. You can try other types. I have many foods for diff fish. My wrasse likes meaty stuff but he nibbles pellets. Clowns like algae wafers and nori oddly but i dont do it often

I buy new food like its corals. These are just my mains i found they liked best

 

[Born2beblack]

Black worms
Brine shrimp
Mysis shrimp
Spidina infused shrimp
Planktons
Rotifers

Many kinds of meaty foods for fish lucky for us

 

[Born2beblack]

Hell mine eat up some chopped clams and salmon from the store

 

[Azedenkae]

Thanks y'alls. XD Maybe I'll just have to try something else. The occy seems to enjoy the food enough when it does manage to capture a pellet, but perhaps some other food might be more attractive to it. Too lazy to dip food in garlic. :3

 

[Reef.]

My clowns tend to do the same, let the food come to them, I don’t think the same if the food and then also being pellets is helping tho, I would change to frozen, mine have a far better feeding response to frozen, if you do stick with pellets I would get a smaller one or chop the ones you have in pieces, atm it seems you are maybe feeding it the food he doesn’t prefer and too big a size and wondering why he’s not keen on eating.

 

[Born2beblack]

Thanks y'alls. XD Maybe I'll just have to try something else. The occy seems to enjoy the food enough when it does manage to capture a pellet, but perhaps some other food might be more attractive to it. Too lazy to dip food in garlic. :3

Haha i feel that about alage on glass
Way to lazy some weeks

But i agree eith the other comment
Clowns are picky. Some arent but the most ive had have been super picky. Im blessed with this pair.

Try frozen i find fish go crazy for soem good brine and mysis

 

[Azedenkae]

My clowns tend to do the same, let the food come to them, I don’t think the same if the food and then also being pellets is helping tho, I would change to frozen, mine have a far better feeding response to frozen, if you do stick with pellets I would get a smaller one or chop the ones you have in pieces, atm it seems you are maybe feeding it the food he doesn’t prefer and too big a size and wondering why he’s not keen on eating.

Nemo seems to be more than happy to chomp down on the food once he does capture it though, sometimes he can get more than one. But you are probably still right, he might not so much be 'happy' as 'reluctant but nonetheless having to eat the food' due to the size. So I will crush the food up and see how it goes. Failing that, I suppose frozen food then.

Haha i feel that about alage on glass
Way to lazy some weeks

But i agree eith the other comment
Clowns are picky. Some arent but the most ive had have been super picky. Im blessed with this pair.

Try frozen i find fish go crazy for soem good brine and mysis

Sounds good. Yeah, will consider other foods like frozen and stuff.

 

[dedragon]

for frozen i feel the go tos here are LRS reef frenzy, rods, and PE Mysis as top quality frozen foods. Any reason you are running your salinity so low at 1.022?

 

[Reef.]

for frozen i feel the go tos here are LRS reef frenzy, rods, and PE Mysis as top quality frozen foods. Any reason you are running your salinity so low at 1.022?

I agree with the first two, not so much with the mysis, if you haven’t tried mysis maybe try that first before the expensive P.E mysis, mine didn’t like mysis, thought it worth trying P.E Mysis, yep they didn’t like that either, was an expensive mistake.

 

[Azedenkae]

for frozen i feel the go tos here are LRS reef frenzy, rods, and PE Mysis as top quality frozen foods. Any reason you are running your salinity so low at 1.022?

Thanks, and the reason salinity is at 1.021 to 1.022 was because I originally had it at 1.025 but the live stock I ordered from LiveAquaria kept on dying. After sending me a long survey of my water parameters, care, and so on, they concluded that the fish and corals they were sending me were being sent from holding facilities with salinities of 1.018 and 1.021 and so my difference in salinity was the cause of death.

That did not really make sense to me, because well, that's part of the point of acclimatization. But I had more corals coming and the tank was relatively empty then anyways. So okay, whatever, I'll play the game. I decreased the salinity to 1.021, still acclimatized the live stock from LiveAquaria, and they still died anyways. I moved on to buying live stock from Cultivated Reef, and thought, well since my aquarium is at 1.021 anyways, let's just leave it at that and get the new live stock in, before slowly bringing it up.

A week later the clowns I ordered from CR came and was just immediately different from anything I ordered from LiveAquaria. Then the from Cultivated Reef came and was in, at which point I was gonna bring the salinity up, but then thought, well the cnidarians I most want to keep alive are growing and doing super well at 1.021 salinity anyways, and I do remember back from my days working at a LFS that lower salinity, but not too low, was good for marine fish to prevent certain infections and also lowers the amount of energy needed to be dedicated to osmoregulation without actually causing adapted molecular machinery to shut down. Essentially. I briefly read a bunch of papers that seemed to support that notion that a lot of marine fish do fair better at lower salinities. I decided that hey, if it does not seem to be broken, let's not try to fix it.

Especially since beyond the corals, the two clownfish are more important and I basically only need them to thrive. Fast forward a month or so and the fish are doing great, except for Nemo being super lazy. The glove polyps are growing like crazy, along with the mini maxi which keeps on getting larger. The other corals I got also are doing well (except for a birdsnest that I accidentally bleached, whoops), but either way they don't really matter that much. So yeah, I decided to eh, just keep it at 1.021 to 1.022 then. The range is because my tank is 20 gallons (actual water volume is probably more like 15 gallons) and loses about a gallon of water every two days, so salinity keeps on increasing to 1.022 until I top it up.

Sorry for the long explanation. XD It's a bit longwinded how I got to this point.

I agree with the first two, not so much with the mysis, if you haven’t tried mysis maybe try that first before the expensive P.E mysis, mine didn’t like mysis, thought it worth trying P.E Mysis, yep they didn’t like that either, was an expensive mistake.

Thanks for the reco. Will take note. Now to figure where best to buy frozen without yet spending sinking too much money into it before knowing how well it may/may not work.

 

[jramy123]

Not sure if you can find where you are at but might i suggest this pellet? My ocelleris both chow down on it. As you can see in the picture, they stay near the top of tank with their nemmy so I hand feed near them and they scarf down the pinch I put in. It is a very fine pellet till they get bigger. Strangely enough they won't eat mysis shrimp for some reason.

 

[Azedenkae]

Not sure if you can find where you are at but might i suggest this pellet? My ocelleris both chow down on it. As you can see in the picture, they stay near the top of tank with their nemmy so I hand feed near them and they scarf down the pinch I put in. It is a very fine pellet till they get bigger. Strangely enough they won't eat mysis shrimp for some reason.

Yeah I feed them the same thing, just slightly larger pellets (1mm vs. 0.5mm). Sounds like fish just have very different tastes. XD But yeah, I'll try breaking up my food a bit, then frozen food and if it does not work, then... something else.

 

[josvanmeer]

Most clowns are captive bred so they usually eat what they have been fed at the breeder. This usually is not frozen food, but flakes and pellets. My fancy longfin clowns were very hesitant towards frozen food but they have learned to love it. I feed so much stuff anyways that I feed something for all my fishes appetite.

 

[Reef.]

Thanks for the reco. Will take note. Now to figure where best to buy frozen without yet spending sinking too much money into it before knowing how well it may/may not work.

I can understand your thinking, if something isn’t broke don’t fix it, but the only way you are really going to know something is off if the fish start going down hill, then it can be too late, for things like salinity, ph, temp p, alk etc I think the hobby has come to an understanding where those levels need to be, you are always going to find some info on the net saying different , but I think you need to be sure on the science before going outside those standard parameters, I would keep your salinity at 1.0264, as outside of that your other parameters are going to be off too.

Food wise, I would try the smaller frozen foods, things like cyclops, fish eggs, brine shrimp, plankton, copopods etc seems too small for the fish, but these tend to be what my clowns love, the bigger stuff they don’t bother so much with.

Tip, buy a thin sharp knife and you can chop the frozen cubes into 4-6 pieces, whilst still frozen, store in a little tub, makes a $4 packet last 5 times as long, and saves loads of money, one cube is way to much for 2-3 fishes.

 

[Azedenkae]

I can understand your thinking, if something isn’t broke don’t fix it, but the only way you are really likely going to know something is off if the fish start going down hill, then it can be too late, for things like salinity, ph, temp p, alk etc I think the hobby has come to an understanding where those levels need to be, you are always going to find some info on the net saying different , but I think you need to be sure on the science before going outside those standard parameters, I would keep your salinity at 1.0264, as outside of that your other parameters are going to be off too.

Food wise, I would try the smaller frozen foods, things like cyclops, fish eggs, brine shrimp, plankton, copopods etc seems too small for the fish, but these tend to be what my clowns love, the bigger stuff they don’t bother so much with.

Tip, buy a thin sharp knife and you can chop the frozen cubes into 4-6 pieces, whilst still frozen, store in a little tub, makes a $4 packet last 5 times as long, and saves loads of money, as o e cube is way to much for 2-3 fishes.

Thanks for your input. I do agree and am still somewhat concerned about the long term effects, especially because you are right, once signs show it can be too late. Although on the topic of the hobby and what is typical, it is quite normal for fowlr tanks to have a salinity down as low as 1.018, right? At least that was the general belief that kept on being thrown around, I am not sure if people still keep their fowlr tanks at lower salinities anymore. I did try to find out more info with recent tanks, but... kinda hard. Seems like reef tanks are far more popular than fowlr tanks nowadays.

 

[Reef.]

Thanks for your input. I do agree and am still somewhat concerned about the long term effects, especially because you are right, once signs show it can be too late. Although on the topic of the hobby and what is typical, it is quite normal for fowlr tanks to have a salinity down as low as 1.018, right? At least that was the general belief that kept on being thrown around, I am not sure if people still keep their fowlr tanks at lower salinities anymore. I did try to find out more info with recent tanks, but... kinda hard. Seems like reef tanks are far more popular than fowlr tanks nowadays.

there is no science to say it’s better for the fish to be kept at lower salinity but yes some do keep fish only systems low, but I don’t think you could say it’s accepted in the hobby that generally it’s better for the fish. It’s definitely an on going topic.

Seems to me part of the reasoning is that parasites jump off fish at lower salinity so keep the fish healthier, if the parasites don’t like it, why would the fish?
I think you need a load of evidence before going against the fish’s natural environmental conditions.

 

[Azedenkae]

there is no science to say it’s better for the fish to be kept at lower salinity but yes some do keep fish only systems low, but I don’t think you could say it’s accepted in the hobby that generally it’s better for the fish. It’s definitely an on going topic.

Seems to me part of the reasoning is that parasites jump off fish at lower salinity so keep the fish healthier, if the parasites don’t like it, why would the fish?
I think you need a load of evidence before going against the fish’s natural environmental conditions.

I did find this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S153204560100268X, which looked at optimal salinity for a variety of fish. Seems like at least one saltwater fish was found to prefer lower salinity than seawater, but there were so many different fish tested and a lot of them seemed to move between freshwater and saltwater, and honestly I did not look at the paper carefully (yet), but it does point to at least the potential that marine fish might do better at lower salinity than seawater. But! I honestly must say I have not looked at this with enough detail to make any sort of call, so best leave it at that. XD

I will try to read up on this more soon, would be good to actually know more from peer-reviewed literature than just basing decisions off of ideas thrown around years ago. But, just been a bit busy.

 

[dedragon]

The low salinity I get for the fish, but I wonder about long term effects to corals. @jsker might be able to help as they have a thread discussing their experience with low salinity