Fish on a Diet

Everywhere I look it seems like people are saying that White Cloud Mountain Minnows are super gentle and food shy and you have to feed them on the separate side of the tank because everybody will out compete them for food. As far a my white clouds are concerned, this is 100% not true. They will bully away all of the other fish away from food. The guppy males, the cory cats, and my little pleco.

Usually I will drop my flake or frozen food into the tank, then on the other side drop pellets for the corydoras and right before lights out I stick an algae wafer in for my pleco. This is how they are fed by the day: flake, micro pellet, pea, frozen/live food (usually brine shrimp), rehydrated tubifex and daphnia, flake, fast day. For the flake I have Bug Bites Tropical and Sera Tropical. They get a bit of both.

Today I came back around after feeding the other tanks and saw two incredibly fat WCMMs. Now, mine tend to be a bit overweight as it is, but this is getting simply ridiculous.

I have put the two worst offenders in a breeder net to put them on a diet for a few days. They will be getting peas every other day with small amounts of flake and two fasting days this week. Is there anything else I can do to help get their weight down? When out and about they will steal everybody's food, even trying to swallow the bottom feeder pellets whole.

Is could be pregnant, not 100% sure though.

Reducing feeding will help, along with the peas. Not sure what else you can do... also try to reduce feeding for the bottom feeders.

Remove it from he breeders net - those things really stress fish out.

My other minnows look pretty normal. The one that I am fairly certain is male is always showing off his fins, and he is a very good weight. These two tend to for the pellets and pick at them until they swallow it whole. They look lumpy after eating.

Some fish are just big. That one does look a bit fat, lol...

Reduce feeding, feed peas, and good luck!