Reply With Quote"I find my fishes prefer catfood to sera bits."
You feed catfood to your fishes?
Being a bored art student who's forced to learn science seems to have it's advantages. It's occured to me that fish growth is affected by a number of factors. Stress, Diet, Nitrates, Oxygen and finally Sunlight. Of course the species is key, but lets generalise for now.
The common belief is that a fish in a small tank will remain small whereas a fish in a large tank will grow larger. While this is a gross misinterpretation of the situation it does shed light (pun intended) on the factors that determine growth. As Ranmasatome said "The fish will grow as big as it's genes tell it to grow." Meaning, an Arapaima gigas in a 2 ft tank WILL eventually outgrow the tank and attain it's full 8 or so feet. Of course that's assuming it survives, which it won't. So why the belief?
Reason 1 - Nitrates: Big tanks mean more water
The bigger the tank, the greater it's volume. The greater the volume, the longer it takes for nitrates to reach dangerous levels. And the longer it takes for nitrates to reach dangerous levels the longer your fish can grow without being stressed.
Apparently hight nitrate levels damage the red blood cells of fish. So with less oxygen means less energy for bodily functions and growth. But you're probably thinking, "I have plants".
Well plants can only absorb nitrates if there are sufficient amounts of OTHER chemicals in the water or substrate. I.e. iron, magnesium, potassium, carbon dioxide and light. While most of us have adequate amounts of the last 2, the other first 3, especially potassium are almost always lacking. Measure your nitrate levels you'll be surprised.
Reason 2 - Oxygen: Big tanks mean more oxygen
Bigger tanks usually have less fish per liter as compared to smaller tanks and probably more oxygen producing plants as well. More oxygen means (theoretically) more energy for growth.
Also, if your nitrates are too high, your fish are less affected by respiration problems. Meaning that in a large tank with excessive nitrates, it's impact on the fish is reduced by the increased oxygen content. That means less stress and more growth. Once again, even for planted tanks like ours, if nitrates aren't being absorbed oxygen isn't being produced.
Reason 3 - STRESS!!!: Big tanks mean you can hide
Great big planted tanks (even bare ones) mean you can hide from that damn cichlid or scale eater that keeps bothering you. Reduced stress. It means less nitrate problems. Reduced stress. It means more oxygen and less gasping at the surface. Reduced stress. It means your stupid owner won't even bother trying to catch you. Reduced stress. And anything in a constantly stressed environment won't grow optimally.
Reason 4 - Diet: An all bloodworm diet is BAD
This one is as simple as they come. A bad diet in ANY organism means reduced growth. That means fish fed on nothing but bloodworms may have growth spurts initially, but when their calcium runs out, they can't grow.
So, vary their diet, worms, daphnia, dry food and should you feel lazy, table scraps. I find my fishes prefer catfood to sera bits. While this isn't related to tank size it's one of the main reasons fish never grow well.
So, when you buy fish food, read the lable, are there any vitamins? is it mostly ash? Is it even the right food for your fish?
Reason 5 - Sunlight: Big tanks need big space.
And that means they're usually placed near windows or at least recieve more light than small 1 - 2ft tanks on table tops.
Sunlight contains UV light, which causes the production of Vitamin D. This happens in humans and reptiles. While there's no proof it happens in fish, chances are it does. We all breathe don't we?
Vitamin D is required for bone growth. Essential for it rather. Vitamin D deficiency causes the bone disease Rickets. While you won't see this in fish, it does tell you that without Vitamin D, bone cells have trouble forming. So a fish that can't grow bones can't grow.
I hope that helped some of you. And more importantly i hope it improves the lives of our fish. Pardon the bad spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Sources:
http://www.koivet.com/html/articles/...?article_id=81
http://ibdcrohns.about.com/od/relate.../a/fdavitd.htm
http://www.fao.org/docrep/field/003/AC168E/AC168E00.htm
http://www4.hmc.edu:8001/Chemistry/1...ources/beg.txt
Last edited by XnSdVd; 2nd Nov 2006 at 15:39.
"I find my fishes prefer catfood to sera bits."
You feed catfood to your fishes?
I ran out of fishfood one day. It was the only other thing in the house. The strange thing was the bettas took to it instantly. One would grab a piece and refuse to let it go. He just kept "sucking" on it till it got soft enough to swallow.
So would it be any help to the fish if I run an air pump during the period when the Co2 is off? Would oxygen rich water improve conditions?
About the catfood part, I've also heard of prawn farms using chicken feed. My cousin who kept Koi used commercial fish food meant for food fish as it is cheaper. He claimed it accelerates growth.
Actually Thio advises this method. Also keep in mind that in the wild, the rate of gaseous exchange in MUCH higher. Unlike our tanks where O2 levels drop significantly after dark.Originally Posted by bryan
Actually i'd like to experiment with using excessive air pumps instead of CO2...
This is an interesting read.
I have a question: are there any correlations between the temperature of water, size of fish and life span?
I remember reading somewhere (I may be wrong or the source could be wrong) that fishes, being cold blooded, would built up a better appetite when their surrounding temperature is raised, this will lead to the fishes growing bigger, but it will also shorten the life span of the fishes. Is this true?
- eric
I have been using this method as my fishes were seen hovering at the top of the tank in the mornings as the lights are off for the whole night.
Also, not sure if it is me or what but I do noticed that plants are growing faster than before...
You cannot get above 100% O2 saturation with aeration and that is plain fact. Plants add pure O2 as a waste product from photosynthesis and that can raise the O2 above 100% saturation. O2 dips at night due to the fact that the plants are not adding in anymore and bacteria/fish continue to use the O2. If you do not have any surface movement for some gas exchange to take place, you would often find gasping fishes in the early morning and etc. All you really need is some surface movement and you do not need the air-pump at night. (The air-pump drives off the hard-earned excess O2 out of the water rapidly once it comes on.)
Regards
Peter Gwee
Plant Physiology by Taiz and Zeiger
But surface agitation will also drive off the O2 since the air pump does the same thing of actually providing some sort of agitation to the surface...
Then why issit that air pump drives O2/CO2 out of the water faster than agitation created by say a fan...
Slight CO2 loss is fine during the day as is during the night from the surface movement (You can always add a tad if some is loss.). If the plants don't do well, you might have fish hang near the surface thinking that it is the CO2 but in fact it is the O2 when you don't have any surface movement.
Regards
Peter Gwee
Plant Physiology by Taiz and Zeiger
Nice article ShannonAny tips on what fish food should contain? I've been feeding the Hikari Micropellets to my ember tetras.. come to think of it, I've never been serious about fish keeping compared to plant keeping.
In the Oct issue of Tropical Fish Hobbyist, there was an article on the need to provide our fishes with Vitamin C as well as some fishes like us cannot produce their own Vitamin C. The author's empirical results showed that fishes supplied with a constant supply of Vit. C in their diet grew faster and bigger and healthier than those without.\\
However, the problem is that Vitamin C is extremely soluable in water. And the freezing and drying of the foods breaks down a significant amount of Vitamin C. And the dissolved Vitamin C cannot be accessed by the fishes although they are in the water (somehow I don't understand why so)...
A pity that the article did not provide a solution to this problem. Any ideas how we can provide the sufficient amout of Vitamins to our fishes?
In addition, there was also a short discussion on the need to introduce some UV for Vitamin D production.
A wide variety of food ranging from daily flake food coupled with ocassional live food should be more than enough. You want to pack the fish like discus folks do for maximum size?
Regards
Peter Gwee
Plant Physiology by Taiz and Zeiger
Actually, I find that feeding my fish with a mixture of high quality fish food pellets seems to do wonders as compared to solely on live and frozen food. My ram who sits in a 1 1/2 footer is developing strong colouration just on azmi's dried daphnia mix and oceanfree XO super colur enhancer.
I do believe that it is important that we keep teh dry foods fresh as exposing the foods for too long to air or keeping it for too long will render the whatever added vitamins and minerals in the food unless as they oxidises.
Just wondering, how long do you guys keep your fish food after opening?
But I am indeed interested to try out Azmi's dried daphnia mix to my picky eaters.
To answer Valice's vitamin C question - Oranges. those little... droplet thingees are roughly the size of some pellets. And my bettas have no problem taking those the second they hit the water. They also take mango and grapes.
What about the artificial colouring in fishfood? You know those super duper red enhancer blah blah blah...
According to Gan when he was promoting his secret formula fish food, the some of the fish food found in LFS have artificial colouring additives which is bad for fish.
After some random reading on vitamins: Any food that has all the vitamins. Apparently they're all involved in the synthesis of either calcium or protein. Perhaps some experimentation is in order...Nice article Shannon
Also, the back of an oceanfree bottle seems to have no vitamins at all. In fact you can't even tell how much of what makes up the food.
Whereas the back of a sera bottle has (if memory servers) A, B and E. Specific protein, fat and mineral contents as well as MSG (why?!)
Of course that doesn't mean oceranfree products are devoid of vitamins. It just means they either don't test, don't know, don't care or think their consumers don't bother.
dunno leh...
but a healthy, and more importantly, happy fish will colour up without colour enhancing food. It might be that the food is high in iron or somesuch. My dietary knowledge is limited. Shall bug my science lecturer next week
It makes sense... but there's always the danger of bringing the temperature TOO high and stressing the fish. Mine is usually 25 - 27 degrees. As for the shortening of their lifespans... yes i beleve a similar thing happens in humans. Organism's cells seem to have a limited number of times they can divide. We die when our cells can no longer reproduce. So it stands to reason that the faster you grow, the sooner you die.
But the the point of this article was to improve the health and reduce the stress of the fish. Hmm... interesting thought you've put in my head...
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