Confirm proper feeding

[illinifish]

Hello! I have a new juvenille tank-raised ocellaris clown. This is my first saltwater fish, and have her in a 6 gal nano with live rock/live sand only. Upgrading to larger tank soon. No other inhabitants, tank properly cycled. Have had her 1 week and seems to be doing well.

I picked her (i am assuming "her" since she's the only one) out because she only has one eye! Like the other one was never there. Doesn't seem to slow her down though!

Anyway, based on the LFS recommendation, I am feeding her 3-4 pellets of Spectrum in the morning, and trying to feed her 5-6 frozen mysis shrimp each evening.

Sometimes she acts like the pellets are too big for her or something and holds them in her mouth and swims around with them. I mentioned this to the LFS and they reccomended spirulina flakes, which I she seems to like and I have given her twice in place of the pellets.

The mysis is a little difficult- currently I'm breaking off a tiny chunk and defrosting it by holding it the water and she nibbles on it, and then goes after a few pieces of what comes off but she seems to miss a lot of it (not sure if this is a function of her one-eyedness) and it's sort of a mess.

I just wanted to run this by someone else and make sure that I am feeding her a proper diet and enough food. I also ordered some cyclopeeze but not sure if she needs it or not.

Thanks!

[illinifish]

Anybody anybody?

[gberry]

Sounds like you're doing well with your feeding. Variety is good, it will help with their coloration from what I understand. As far as amounts, whatever it'll eat within 2 minutes or so is enough. You mentioned the pellets seem too large, are you using 1mm or .5mm pellets?

[Slakker]

Cyclopeeze is a great food for clowns, especially if you ordered the frozen variety. I would recommend thawing the mysis in some RO water (or even a few drops of tank water) before adding it to the tank, however.

I would crush up the Spectrum pellets so they are in smaller, easier to eat pieces. Remember, in a 6 gallon tank you only want to feed what she will eat, there's not a lot of room for overfeeding and it can quickly foul water quality. I'd cut one of your daily feedings out completely, actually. You can also pick up some Formula 1 (I like the flake and frozen) for some added variety.

One thing to be mindful of with flake foods is to try not to float them on the surface for her...don't want her eating up a bunch of air bubbles! I hold large pieces of flake below the surface in my fingers and my clowns eat it straight from my hand.

[Lance M.]

Sounds like your doing a good job.

Do you have a small clean-up crew in the tank (crabs, snails) to get the leftovers?

[Zaita]

Hey illinifish,

I would agree with cutting down your feeding to maybe once a day, or once every second day.

One of the key things is to feed a variety of foods, and with a high nutrional value.

Cyclopse-Eze - Wonderful food, clownfish absolutely love it and it has a high nutrional value.

Bloodworm - Mostly water, good to feed sometimes but not as a main food source.

Spirlina Algae Flakes - Also a good food, not too sure on the nutrional value of this though and may need to crush some of the bigger bits up a little if you clown is having issues.

Mysis - Quite a good food, again you could crush it up a little. I usually just run a cube in the net under warm tap water to thraw it a little then squeeze the juice out to reduce the amount that will foul the water up.

Brine Shrimp - This is a clownfish fav, however it has the nutrional value of candy-floss :P It's a "sometimes" food for your clownfish hehe. But its good to give it to em sometimes when you wanna make em happy.

Clownfish are opportunistic eaters, which means anything goes pretty much.

I would also say that your clownfish is a "he". Clownfish all start as males and the bigger/dominant in a pair/group will become a female.

It is also advisable to feed your clown in little bits, to give the clown enough time to consume it before you add more. This will stop the excess food fouling you water as the others pointed out

Hope this helps,
Scott