New fish from Hedut

[stephcps]

I bought some lovely fish from Hedut yesterday! My first attempt with Discus. I was lucky to find someone with excellent fish! They are 3 inches to 4.5 inches, 7 of them in all! Extremely reasonable price too!! Thanks Hendri!!

Anyway, I need some guidance about how much to feed. Last night about 2 hours after being in the new tank, I gave them Frozen blood worms from Hikari..1/2 a frozen cube. They scarfed that down quick so I gave them the other half and that was gone in a flash as well. This a.m. I gave them a cube of the frozen bloodworms and a cube of frozen beefheart. They ate it all in just a few minutes and seemed to be looking for more!!

So, how much should I feed them at one time? I planned to feed four times a day. Twice with Frozen bloodworms/beefheart/ shrimp, the other two with flake (prime reef).

I'll post pics soon!

Thanks for the info!!

Stephanie

[Cooldadddyfunk286]

I like to do alot of small feedings, just enough to hold them over till the next one. I have 7 albinos in one tank for example...I only feed 1 hikari cube at a time. but I will feed 5-8 times a day. its just good to have a varied diet. cubes, flakes, pellets, beefheart...all that.

[Apistomaster]

Your Discus are large enough now that they only need to be fed 3 times a day. Feeding them smaller amounts more frequently is fine but that may be difficult is you have a job.

The diet you have set forth is fine but I would also feed them more sinking Discus pellet type foods instead of only flake food. Some flake food is fine but Discus like to feed off the bottom more than they do from the top. I also believe pellet foods are more filling.
I use Tetra Color Bits as my pellet food and earth worm flakes as the flake food. This flake food sinks rapidly but most commercial flake foods are designed to float.

[stephcps]

Do you presoak pellets?

[seanyuki]

No need to presoak the pellets




Do you presoak pellets?

[Apistomaster]

Do you presoak pellets?

Not usually but I have had a few individual Discus that would eat a lot of dry pellets, then the pellets swelled as they absorbed water then in turn somehow disturbed the swim bladder in such a way as to cause them to loose their balance temporarily. One guy would float completely upside down. Other times it was a struggle for a few to stay upright.
I think this had more to do with how much and what type of food they had recently eaten that temporarily made it difficult for them to release gas bubbles. These few fish that exhibited the problem could be seen releasing gas from their vents until they re-established their equilibrium. This only happened within one group of Red turquoise I once had and I think they may have had some minor congenital internal defects.
I have never seen this phenomenon with any other Discus.
I have seen Tetras eat too much flake food have similar temporary buoyancy control problems. Don't let this anecdote prevent you from using pellet food for discus.
One other benefit of feeding Discus pellet food is that should the need arise to treat them with medication for internal parasites, you can soak the pellets in the medication. This is the best way to deliver some fish medications.

[hedut]

Thanks, is just Kenny always send the best for me:D:D:D. For the amout of food is all depend on your fish:D:D:D. Like I said before I just PP them a day before and I leave it over night so they don't eat for 24 hrs:D:D:D
What I usually do is feed the BF before you WC after that like 2 - 3 time tetra bit, FBW, 2 times prime reef and on the week end I usually feed the more 6 to 8 times :D:D:D. Is better for you buy more than 6 16 oz hikari FBW or you can mix them, here links http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=3578+7927+9035&pcatid=9035 or http://www.blackworms-are-here.com/frozenfoods.html.
a bit expensive on the front but save money than you buy FBW from LSF:D:D


Thanks

hendri

[Jhhnn]

My eight 4" fish from Kenny get fed 4-5 times a day. I semi-thaw flat-paks of FBW, brine shrimp, & mysis, cut 1-1/4 squares, refreeze in ziplocks to make it easy. I also feed about the same amount with Eddie's seafood mix and Carol's beefheart. My fish gobble down those chunks in less than 15 minutes...

I also change 50% of their water daily.

Teenage discus have enormous appetites and will grow rapidly when those appetites are satisfied...

[Disgirl]

Teenage discus
I like that! I guess mine are teenagers then :D!
Barb

[Apistomaster]

I feed my Discus the frozen square of Blood Worms.
But feeding Discus the frozen cubes does no harm to Discus. If you can afford to buy FBW in bulk that is the way to go. I buy 50 lbs of frozen blood worms twice a year from www.oregondesertbrineshrimp.com and get a very good product for much less than Hikari. They only sell in bulk quantities. Each pack is 4 oz.s and is frozen into many connect cubes like a Hershey Bar only smaller.
I have a ton of carnivorous plecos species which go through a lot of FBW. Right now I only have some wild Blues and Brilliant turquoise so I don't have as many Discus to feed as I have in the past. Won't be long before I will have plenty of jr Discus again to feed though.

When I want to feed all my fish bloodworms then I thaw a 1/4 lb pack and squirt it into the tanks in the amount they will eat quickly.
It makes it easier to feed a few to a tank of 6 breeder Plecos or lot in a tank hold 50 juveniles.

[Jhhnn]

I bought a mixed 10 lb order of Hikari FBW, mysis, brine shrimp and spirulina brine shrimp from Drs F&S. I also got some jumbo mysis that my fish wouldn't eat... so I blended it into the seafood mix...

A lot better buy than the LFS, that's for sure... They sometimes offer free shipping on orders over some set price, making it an even better deal, and it all seem to keep great in our freezer...

And yeh, the fish don't care if it's still frozen, not one bit...