Share your QT feeding tips

[saltyhog]

Would love to hear your tips for feeding fish in QT. How exactly do you feed? How often? How much? What foods do you commonly use?

Don't have a lot to share but my meager observations.

1. I keep frozen blood worms on hand all the time. They will often get difficult fish to eat. I have the luxury of a LFS that always has live black worms but I've rarely had to resort to that.

2. Once a fish is paying attention to me when I come to feed, I feed with all the pumps off (HOB and powerhead). This allows me to make sure most of the food is being eaten, allows me to keep track of how much the fish are eating and most important to me gets the fish "socialized" It makes it much easier to catch the fish later if the need ever arises and it makes it much more fun when the fish gets to the DT as they are out and not afraid when people approach the tank.

3. I feed multiple times a day. When I'm home I'll feed small amounts every hour or so. This adds to the socialization of the fish IMO.

4. Foods I normally use in addition to the ones mentioned above....frozen mysis (PE and Hikari depending on the fish's size), LRS Fish Frenzy, Nori for herbivores.

 

[lion king]

Most of my fish require live feedings, so I always plan for that, and any notorious difficult to feed fish it would be best to plan for that as well. So hatching some brine shrimp ahead of time might be a good idea for some; a resource for pods, black worms, ghosties, etc.. Rather than the minimum filtration as the most common advised sponge filter, I filter my qt with an hob filter and a hob protein skimmer and an algae reactor on deck if needed. Difficult to feed fish and finicky eaters sometimes require multiple attempts and multiple choices of food, so overfeeding the tank is easy to do.

 

[JMM744]

I keep white worms, baby brine-and various frozen foods on hand. Just trying my hand at dispar anthias and have found them very picky. Also very diseased. If I am going to qt butterflies I have black worms on hand but more and more rely on white worms. They stay alive much longer and I don’t have to pay shipping. Great subject!!

 

[OrionN]

I have a 40 gal breeder reef system with sand bed, macro algae, and corals in it. Soft, LPS and SPS. These are overgrowth corals from my tank.
The system is full of fauna and flora. Specifically it is overgrowth with pods and various sand dwelling worms like Medusa and feather duster.
I don't get large fish for 40 gal is plenty of room to get my fish use to captivity and captive food. I keep newly acquired fish in this system until they do well and release them to DT. I have a pair of dither fish in this tank, Percula clowns. The absolutely eat everything and a good way to taught new fish to eat captive food.
I feed combination of flakes, frozen mysis and pellets in AM before I go to work. I have automatic feeder that feed 4 more times during the day and if I am home early enough, O also feed frozen mysis and flakes in the evening.
I never have problem with new fish. Regal angels, and CBB is particularly beneficial to be in this system. Wrasses also. I have fish at nearly to the grave would come back well in this system. I was not able to safe everyone of them. Just lost two Flame Wrasses form LA. One on arrival and one just past the 2 weeks guarantee period. I also have lost a Pintail wrasse.
I find that getting young wrasses i a lot better than terminal males.

 

[nereefpat]

This is a good topic. Feeding in QT creates some challenges, and it can be more difficult than feeding a display tank. There is a balance between making sure new fish are well fed, and not polluting the water in a smaller (potentially not even cycled) tank. There are also medications that you have to consider. An example is not being able to use Prime or similar when using copper medications.

Some good things are discussed above. One thing I would add: It may be obvious, but if you can see your new fish eat at a store, your quarantine challenge is MUCH easier.

 

[saltyhog]

This is a good topic. Feeding in QT creates some challenges, and it can be more difficult than feeding a display tank. There is a balance between making sure new fish are well fed, and not polluting the water in a smaller (potentially not even cycled) tank. There are also medications that you have to consider. An example is not being able to use Prime or similar when using copper medications.

Some good things are discussed above. One thing I would add: It may be obvious, but if you can see your new fish eat at a store, your quarantine challenge is MUCH easier.

Great point @nereefpat. Those of you that have a LFS with good selections of healthy fish be thankful. My only LFS (there used to be 3) only keeps "standard equipment" fish. There is nothing that beats seeing the fish eat and interact with other fish.

 

[GoldeneyeRet]

I always make sure I have a powerhead on when I feed as it will elicit a better feeding response than will slow or no flow.

Of course I always try to have a variety of quality frozen and live foods on hand.

I feed very frequently in qt yo to 7 or 8 times a day. I siphonand net out uneaten food every time.

A dither fish can help with picky eaters.

 

[Eye H8 Empty V]

I had no idea that people are feeding that often. I have an Eibli Angel in QT while I'm waiting to get my DT up and running. Right now I'm only feeding once a day. I came upon this thread searching for how long a fish can go without eating. The QT is at my shop and I'm usually there only M-F. It's 5min from my house so driving there for a feeding isn't an issue, at least for me. :) So do fish need to be fed multiple times a day?

 

[lion king]

I had no idea that people are feeding that often. I have an Eibli Angel in QT while I'm waiting to get my DT up and running. Right now I'm only feeding once a day. I came upon this thread searching for how long a fish can go without eating. The QT is at my shop and I'm usually there only M-F. It's 5min from my house so driving there for a feeding isn't an issue, at least for me. :) So do fish need to be fed multiple times a day?

Some fish like certain species of angels and tangs need to fed up to several times a day or be in a mature tank. These fish have a grazing style eating habit, in the wild they can be literally eating all day. An elibi is one that would benefit from a mature tank and/or at least a couple/few feeding a day.

This thread addresses qt feeding, which many times the fish can be picky usually due to them not recognizing what you aer feeding is food. So for the picky eaters and grazers and predatory fish, there can be alot of trial and error.