Fish thrashing and staying at top of tank?

[Naughts]

Amykieran, do you have all males or a mix?

 

[AmyKieran]

Amykieran, do you have all males or a mix?

A mix of males and females of different species

 

[AmyKieran]

If you feed the fish well, they are more likely to be full and less likely to eat each other. However, well fed fish will want to breed and that can cause lots of aggression, especially among cichlids. Less food or feeding less often will reduce their urge to breed, and reduce aggression.

Feed a dry food first and then feed frozen food. If you have live food, put that in the tank after the dry and frozen food. You can feed frozen and live food every day but give them dry food first.

If you feed them well every second day, they will be fed but hopefully won't want to breed as much. However, baby fish and young fish need to be fed well every day so they can grow. If they aren't fed well, they won't grow as fast or at all.

When it comes to adding food to the tank (assuming it is cycled with an established biological filter), feed a small amount of food and let the fish eat it. If they eat it all in a few seconds, offer them a bit more. They should eat everything within a couple of minutes. Uneaten food should be removed after 5-10 minutes unless you have catfish or loaches that should come out when they smell the food.

In this case, I would feed dry food for a couple of minutes, then offer frozen food. They will eat more than 2 cubes of frozen fish food each day. Frozen food can be offered 1 or 2 cubes at a time, one cube at a time is probably safer until you know how much the fish can eat. They should eat all the frozen food within a couple of minutes.

What live food would you reccomend? It’s not something I know a lot about

 

[Colin_T]

brineshrimp, daphnia, mozzie larvae, grindal or white worms, aphids, small flies, mozzies. (insects must be free of chemicals/ pesticides)

 

[AmyKieran]

brineshrimp, daphnia, mozzie larvae, grindal or white worms, aphids, small flies, mozzies. (insects must be free of chemicals/ pesticides)

Cool I’ll give them a go, I spoke also to my friend (who has ran a Malawi tank for years) who has recommended me to feed twice a day and watch ammonia, nitrate, nitrite etc. I have 5 catfish so I doubt it will be an issue. Everyday feed a mix of fine pellet/ flake, cichlid stick and bug bites Then every 4 days feed 4 frozen cubes of something. Does this sound okay to you ?

 

[Colin_T]

I used to feed dry food first, then frozen food, then live food all on the same day. I gave dry in the morning before heading out to work. then in the evening I would do dry, then go around with frozen, then do a round of live food.

The greedy dominant fish would get more dry food and the weaker fish get more frozen and live foods, which help them gain weight and build up their strength a bit quicker.

As long as the filter is established, you can feed dry and frozen every day. If the filter isn't established, then use dry food until the filter settles, then start adding frozen and live food to their diet.

You can feed frozen and live food as often as you like but they should get it at least several times a week and vary what you feed them.