Micro pellets or flakes for Neon Tetras staple?

[stuhyde]

Going to have an all NT tank (10) for a few months from tomorrow before adding anything else, have watched lots of vids regarding the food quantities and it's not particularly easy to guess the amount of food required (for flakes especially).
I'm leaning towards the idea of micro pellets where you can specifically count them before soaking in water, and would maybe 20-25 micro pellets be ample daily for 10 neons?

Was looking at something like the Hikari micro pellets or similar, any recommendations?

I'll be researching the frozen daphnia/cyclops/wafer food after I've got their staple food quantities and frequency sorted.

Thanks.

 

[Magnum Man]

I don't have Neons in specific, but for my small Tetras, I feed a mix of foods, but staples include Ultra Fresh Micro pellets, Big Bites ( I have an aquarium dedicated mortar & pestle, that I "dust up" the Bug Bites, & also feed Frozen Brine Shrimp

 

[GaryE]

Variety is key. I prefer flake over pellets, although if you soak them first, it does reduce the pellet problem. I have always tried to have three types of food minimum, in rotation. I'll use a staple flake, a green flake and a whatever flake - a varied diet is essential especially if you stick with prepared, processed fish foods. Use different brands and different formulations.
My small tetras get bug bites staple, spirulina food, a colour food, decapsulated brine shrimp cysts, and ground up soldier fly larvae.

 

[sharkweek178]

Why not both? A varied diet is key to fish health. I feed mine New Life Spectrum flakes and Fluval Bug Bites pellets.
Whatever you feed them, you want a high quality food. Look at the first five ingredients. Those will be the predominant ingredients. Avoid anything that uses meals. Fish meal, shrimp meal. That's the tails and heads and the parts that we humans don't eat. You want whole ingredients. Try to avoid terrestrial grains like wheat and rice as much as possible. Fish's digestive systems aren't designed for those. It's impossible to avoid grains in fish foods because they have to use something to bind the ingredients. But try to find something that only has one or two grains in the first five ingredients.
Fluval Bug Bites really changed the game with their insect based formula. Now there are other insect based foods. Which is great because it makes it easier to give your fish that varied diet. The New Life flakes I feed are krill/squid/fish based and the Bug Bites are insect based.

Frozen and live foods can be a great part of the diet too. Especially live foods. Those don't have to just be a treat. They can be staples and your fish will be healthy and happier for it. Again, variety is key.

 

[stuhyde]

Thanks all, some more research to be done. As said, I will look at diet variation once they have settled a bit and I've gotten into a routine that suits (new tank, new fish etc etc)
No one has answered the quantity and frequency for the fish feeding. Is 2-3 micro pellets per fish daily ok as a starting point, or should it be 1-2 pellets per fish twice daily?
I have bought the Hikari micro pellets for now (bug bites not available in micro pellets on Amazon) and will pre-soak for 3-5 mins before feeding.
Thanks.

 

[Magnum Man]

my tanks are usually heavily stocked, & I feed fairly heavily ( to make sure everyone gets some ) but only feed every other day

 

[GaryE]

I'm a light feeder. I give a tiny pinch once a day, six days a week. I know it's fun to feed your fish, but they need very little to thrive. I usually tell people to figure out what you think they need, then feed 50% of that. Others have said to feed food to the size of the fish eyeball, but I think that's kind of general.

With micro-pellets, it's hard for me to say since I don't use them. I would think 2 or at most 3 per fish once a day would work.

I've kept fish and refined my feeding regime over 57 years of tetras - I've always had some. They have been long lived and healthy, if they survive the first 3 weeks after purchase.

 

[sharkweek178]

Thanks all, some more research to be done. As said, I will look at diet variation once they have settled a bit and I've gotten into a routine that suits (new tank, new fish etc etc)
No one has answered the quantity and frequency for the fish feeding. Is 2-3 micro pellets per fish daily ok as a starting point, or should it be 1-2 pellets per fish twice daily?
I have bought the Hikari micro pellets for now (bug bites not available in micro pellets on Amazon) and will pre-soak for 3-5 mins before feeding.
Thanks.

Just feed as much as they can eat in 2-3 minutes. Or imagine the volume of both their eyeballs. That's roughly the size of their stomach.
Fish are cold blooded. Which means that they don't need the calories to maintain their body temperature. They don't need to eat more than once a day and they don't need to eat every day either. It's better if they don't. They need fasting days. That gives their digestive systems more time to process. It's good for fish to be a little hungry. It's healthy for them. They'll be more active. And they'll help clean up your tank by looking for bits of food.
Someone here once told me that you're more likely to harm your fish by overfeeding them than by underfeeding. I try to take that to heart. When I started, I followed the directions on the fish food and fed twice a day. That was way too much. Now I feed once a day. Three day cycle. One day, flakes or pellets. The next day will be live or frozen. And then a fasting day. You can even feed every other day. (I'm working on incorporating even more live foods and may get to the point where I only feed flakes or pellets once a week and live or frozen the other days.)
One other thing. Since my fish are small, I use a mortar and pestle to grind up their pellet food. They seem to appreciate that.

 

[stuhyde]

Cheers @GaryE - It makes sense to light feed from the angle of fish health as well as tank maintenance as I have to use a Nitrate filter on the tap as well.
I'll go with this as a base point then - 25 micro pellets daily, soaked, and fastest gob first.

@sharkweek178 Thanks mate for your advice. Will deffo add in the 'treats' so to speak (even they are not treats). Used to get frozen cubes of various stuff for my 5ft tank back 10 years ago.

I'll feed them the soaked micro pellets for a few weeks and see how they settle in, then look at increasing their diet variety.

Cheers.

 

[Ed Pursell]

The Bug Bites pellets are fine, I got a couple neons that love the micro pellets, but I use them limited, I put a few in and mix with Omega One flakes, also limited… Don’t over feed. The micro pellets are fine, you’ll see which ones suck them up. Put a few in the tank and see how they get eaten. Again, don’t over feed, less is better. I feed usually once a day, sometimes every other.

 

[gwand]

Cheers @GaryE - It makes sense to light feed from the angle of fish health as well as tank maintenance as I have to use a Nitrate filter on the tap as well.
I'll go with this as a base point then - 25 micro pellets daily, soaked, and fastest gob first.

@sharkweek178 Thanks mate for your advice. Will deffo add in the 'treats' so to speak (even they are not treats). Used to get frozen cubes of various stuff for my 5ft tank back 10 years ago.

I'll feed them the soaked micro pellets for a few weeks and see how they settle in, then look at increasing their diet variety.

Cheers.

Where did you get the nitrate filter? Thanks.

 

[sharkweek178]

Cheers @GaryE - It makes sense to light feed from the angle of fish health as well as tank maintenance as I have to use a Nitrate filter on the tap as well.
I'll go with this as a base point then - 25 micro pellets daily, soaked, and fastest gob first.

@sharkweek178 Thanks mate for your advice. Will deffo add in the 'treats' so to speak (even they are not treats). Used to get frozen cubes of various stuff for my 5ft tank back 10 years ago.

I'll feed them the soaked micro pellets for a few weeks and see how they settle in, then look at increasing their diet variety.

Cheers.

I should be a little more specific. It depends on the food. There are some frozen food that I want to note. Adult brine shrimp are kind of the fish equivalent of potato chips. The fish like them but they aren't very nutritious. Bloodworms are high in fat content. So those particular foods should just be an occasional treat, if fed at all. Avoid beefheart entirely. That leaves other frozen options like daphnia, mysis shrimp, baby brine shrimp, cyclops, moina that do have more nutritional value.

And there are lots of great live options too. Mosquito larvae, baby brine shrimp, grindal worms, white worms, black worms, daphnia, scuds. Those provide good nutrition and also let the fish exercise their hunting instincts as they hunt and chase their prey. Like anything else, vary the diet.

 

[stuhyde]

Where did you get the nitrate filter? Thanks.

Here

Only used it once so far but has completely stripped out all the Nitrates from my tap water, and they were upwards of 35-40. How long the filters last is dependant on how many Nitrates have to be removed from the water, so I have a spare one.

So far so good!

 

[stuhyde]

 

[GaryE]

@sharkweek178 's point about fish being cold blooded and not needing food for body heat is a key one. It's not one I usually think about when I feed.

We tend to feed our fish like mini-versions of ourselves, and they are different in many ways. One how they get fat - we get fat deposits between our body and skin. Fish hold fat inside their body cavities where their organs are. It's easy to see how this can become fatal - there's only so much space in there.

If I am going to breed my tetras, then food is key. At that point, I increase the quality - no flake or pellets, no processed foods. But the quantities remain the same.

I had a huge batch of killie fry one time, from Aphyosemion ogoense. I divided the group, and fed one tank processed fish foods, and one tank live foods. The dry food group grew faster, and got large quicker than the live food group. It was striking how fast the fish on quality dry food grew. But over time, they proved to be poor breeders compared to the live food group, which caught up size-wise in about a month.

The only exception has been bug based processed foods, where killies fed on it gave some eggs. Not as many as live foods but better than the close to zero eggs I get from killies with top of the line regular flakes. Bug based foods come in between the two.

If you don't breed fish, this still gives something to think about. There is a fast food element to pellets and flakes - feed me at McDonalds on a regular basis, and you bet I'd grow. It's not as cut and dried as human food - not as bad. Fish can do well fed sparingly on a variety of foods. Just vary the brands and types.