Fish is getting too fat

[confused_aquarist]

I am not over feeding them. This fish literally gobbles up all the food and only leaves very little for the females to eat. Females also look plump but only because they’re carrying eggs. I can see a ton of visceral fat under bright lighting in the male. Will this recover with growth or should I worry about indigestion issues, or do you think he is already suffering indigestion. Should I starve them?

 

[MaloK]

When this problem occurs, I disperse the food even more in the tank instead of giving it in the same spot, They'll be forced to forage all around the tank instead, that limits feeding time aggression and give a chance of having a better distribution.

There's a higher risk of water pollution, so feed the same amount no more, spread it around the tank as far as possible from your filter intake, if you see the food taking direction of the filter stop the pump to let it settle a bit.

If there's too much leftovers cut back in quantity, they should be able to find a great % of the food given.

 

[confused_aquarist]

Update: Thank you for the input! This individual is more timid, so rather than aggression, it really just seems to be a more voracious eater and happens to eat much faster than everyone else. And it does tend to hunt down food from very far away. However it seems to be going through a growth spurt, and in the last couple of days has responded a lot to reduced feeding, bloating less and less. I will continue with reduced feeding and give others a chance to catch up in weight.

 

[MaloK]

There will always be a little sneaky one that is better at getting food than the others. loll.

 

[seaweeds]

I got the same problem. I kind of over fed them because I was trying to feed bottom dweller. I leave flakes all over the tank and german blue ram and pearl gourami follow and eat most off them. My hillstream never eat instantly whenever I dropped the flakes. It likes to bully the gold laser. My gold laser is in the clay tubbing. When I dropped the flakes, it slapped the gold laser whenever they try to go out. The funny thing is catfish is armored but is afraid of it so they stayed in the tubbing. My flag fish is like a chubby muscle builder. Only two month and all my fish grew like a inch.

 

[confused_aquarist]

I got the same problem. I kind of over fed them because I was trying to feed bottom dweller. I leave flakes all over the tank and german blue ram and pearl gourami follow and eat most off them. My hillstream never eat instantly whenever I dropped the flakes. It likes to bully the gold laser. My gold laser is in the clay tubbing. When I dropped the flakes, it slapped the gold laser whenever they try to go out. The funny thing is catfish is armored but is afraid of it so they stayed in the tubbing. My flag fish is like a chubby muscle builder. Only two month and all my fish grew like a inch.

That is interesting. I used to have the exact same issue with feed time bullying, although for me my aquarium is a species tank with just 1 type of killifish. There used to be only 4 of them and back then papa killie was aggressively bullying 3 mama killies, but only during feeding time. It also only happened with flakes and not at all with brine shrimp, because they prefer brine shrimp much more than flakes and would be too busy eating. The issue resolved completely after increasing the number of fish from 4→16. Then papa had too many mamas to bully and just gave up and started eating flakes. He has fattened up since then due to properly eating rather than chasing, and it is true, the bullied females fattened up a lot quicker even though they were the ones being chased around