What is overfeeding?

A lot of people start their fishkeeping hobby by being mesmerized by the fish's beauty and cuteness.

This first stage is the time when people are most passionate yet the most ignorant. 

The most common mistake that novice fishkeepers make is overfeeding. 

Most people say to feed only what the fish can eat within 3-5 minutes but this can differ.

Conversely, there are times when fish are fed too little and this is called underfeeding.

Why does overfeeding happen?

When we first bring home a fish, we are excited and we feed the fish to watch it eat and when it eats we become happy like a parent watching their baby eat so we give more. It is similar to the first period in a relationship where you want to give everything to your significant other. 

So due to overfeeding, the water parameters become off and most people think it is due to a lack of filter so they add more. This might solve the problem temporarily but the water will degrade due to overfeeding over and over again. 

Then, when the fish get sick or die, people blame it on something else. However, if you ask experienced fishkeepers, most will tell you your misfortunes are due to overfeeding.  

Most problems that occur in the tank are from overfeeding rather than underfeeding. 

How should we fix it? How fasting works

First off, you should experiment with the amount of feed. Start with a small amount and once they finish it, give a little more, and continue until they stop eating. Once they stop eating, take out the leftover food and note how much you gave. At the next feeding time, give a little less than the total amount they ate. 

Also, the amount of food the fish consume can change with circumstances so I recommend going through the feeding experiment about once a month and recalculating.

Finding the most fundamental problem with your tank is the best way to make your fishkeeping experience the smoothest and happiest as possible.

For this, the first thing you should do is to test your water. For more detail, follow this link. 

My personal advice is to fast them one day out of the week. Fasting right after a water change will produce the best results. 

A lot of people worry about starving their fish but fish do not die or get sick because they don’t eat for a day. Novice fishkeepers think something terrible will happen if their fish skips a meal but I believe this mostly applies to newly hatched fish. Baby fish have a small stomach so they can only eat a little bit at a time and so it is correct to feed small amounts throughout the day. However, most fish, based on their health status, breed and size, can last 5 days to 2 weeks without food. 

After fasting for a day or two, you will see that the tank’s condition, water condition and fish condition has improved. 

I believe that even in nature, fish do not eat abundantly all the time. At times, for whatever reason, they might starve. 

People try to set up their tanks similar to the fish’s natural habitat but when it comes to feeding, some can become obsessive.

Pay attention when medicating 

When medicating, I think it is good to fast the fish or at least feed the fish only dry food. A lot of people think the fish’s condition will deteriorate because of the medicine so they feed expensive food. I disagree. 

The more you feed, the more contaminants (food particles, leftover food, feces) in the water (especially beef heart DIY food and frozen food) which lead to frequent water changes and additional medications. On top of that, aside from the medication being expensive, frequent water change can become stressful for sick fish. (I will go deeper into this topic next time). 

Advantages of over feeding

Overfeeding is not only a bad thing. 

When you know the ins and outs of overfeeding and do it well, it can become a valuable technique. Overfeeding your fish while knowing how it affects your fish can help reach your goals like grow your fish in size, increase the breeding speed, etc.  

I wanted to go over what can happen when fishkeepers do not know the ins and outs of overfeeding and they overfeed due to lack of knowledge. It can be very dangerous. 

Fasting your fish or underfeeding your fish is not as easy as you’d think. It is something that only experienced fishkeepers do. However, ironically, I believe it is one of the things that novice fishkeepers need to learn and do. 

Happy fish keeping!