Uneaten food at bottom of tank. What is the solution?

**R99** · 3rd Dec 2015, 14:39

Hi,

I'm new to the hobby. I have 2 Gouramis, a small catfish, 2 tetras and 1 betta in a 3 foot tank.

I have quite a bit of uneaten fish food (flakes, pellets) sunken to the bottom of tank. They look quite unsightly.

What is the solution?

1. Feed less.
2. Don't feed and let them eat the plants.
3. Clean the bottom of the tank regularly but I don't want to disturb the plants which haven't rooted into the soil
4. Try pellets that dark colored so that they can camoflage on the soil
5. Get a sucker fish

I'm hoping to keep shrimps eventually. Do they help to eat them up?

How do you guys cope with this problem? Thanks.

I'm doing 5 percent water change daily but that does get rid of the problem as I remove water from the top.

Will need some advice. Thanks.

**Urban Aquaria** · 3rd Dec 2015, 18:36

Feeding alot less and manual removal makes a huge difference... after a while you should figure out how much your fishes can eat without excess food littering the substrate. This should be your main focus. Fishes require alot less food than we think.

Your current bio-load is relatively low for the tank size and volume, so that is probably helping to prevent sudden spikes in parameters from the excess rotting food at the moment. Its still best to solve the overfeeding issue before it becomes a problem though.

The water changes are good, but 5% at a time is rather little to make much of a difference (it only reduce parameters by 5%), and it seems rather tedious to be doing it everyday. You'll get more significant results with larger water changes (ie. 20-30% every few days), if necessary.

"Sucker fishes" like plecos are not really suitable as clean up crew (despite what the LFS uncles say) as they also tend to produce quite alot of waste. Most species grow large too which can disturb rooted plants and add a fair bit to the bio-load.

Shrimps can also help to eat the excess food, so they are a good choice as clean up crew (and algae eating crew)... though the gourami and betta in the tank may snack on them too. You try using yamato shrimps which are larger in size to reduce the chances of predation.

**qool** · 3rd Dec 2015, 19:12

I suggest corys they are cute, friendly to other fishes, always hungry and mostly stay on bottom level. Just get at least 6 or more (depending what size you wan to get) and you should see much less uneaten food on the gravel. Cory are the best moving vaccum cleaners I could think of.

**R99** · 4th Dec 2015, 09:34

Thanks for the great advice. I'm now reconsidering the amount I'm feeding each time. Managed to get some ocean nutrition pellets which are a lot smaller and less obvious when they settle on the soil.

I'm actually getting my helper to remove water from my tank everyday and the auto top up to replace cos I finish work late on weekdays. I suppose a 5% dilution daily leads to around 30% change per week.

I'll visit the LFS this weekend for Corys.

**Urban Aquaria** · 4th Dec 2015, 12:40

The other alternative is to use a feeding bowl... any plastic or ceramic bowl the size of a small rice bowl will do. Just place it in the tank and drop the food into it, the fishes will eat from the bowl, then any excess food that are left you can remove easily. The taller side walls of a rice bowl shaped container will help prevent most of the excess food from scattering around the substrate. It may look abit strange in the tank, but it works.

Do note that cories will sift and dig into the substrate to look for food, so that constant activity can uproot the plants that you have in the tank (as what you've mentioned in your first post), hence do factor that in. Cories also do better in fine sand or gravel substrate with rounded edges to sift though (active soil that retain and hide waste tend to cause mouth/barbel infections in cories if the substrate is dirty).

**R99** · 4th Dec 2015, 14:01

Thanks UA. Feeding bowl is a brilliant idea! Will try that. Just like feeding dogs. Haha.
Maybe I shouldn't get cories first. I'm trying to grow a Monte Carlo carpet and have difficulty trying to make them root into the soil.