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How much food?

I've heard the "feed your fish all they will eat in 2-3 minutes and that's all they need 3 times a day". I've read about feeding your fish X% of their weight each day. I'm raising Tilapia and just want them to grow so should I feed them all they will eat as often as they'll eat? Basically when I'm around during the day (or night) if there's no food floating I'll toss in what I think they'll eat and if they eat all that I give them more until they stop eating. Also I find that feeding them larger pellets isn't a problem because they keep attacking them until they're gone or the fish get their fill. What's wrong or right here?

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Permalink Reply by Alex Veidel on March 17, 2014 at 7:11am

Well, how much you feed your fish is going to depend on how much your system's biofilter can handle. If you start seeing inappropriate levels of ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate, you'll need to back off on feeding. Feeding them three times a day is a good rule of thumb. If you want to increase that, make sure your system can handle it.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Roberts on March 17, 2014 at 6:27pm

Only thing better than 3 times a day is a belt feeder. Every morning you put the food on the belt, and wind the mechanism, and they get fed almost continuously as the belt slowly moves and drops the food in. I was at an aquaculture place on Saturday and they were feeding like that. Quite slick.

There are also demand feeders, i.e. pendulum feeders. I have no experience with them, but would caution about putting more than a days worth of rations in them in case there are problems.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff S on March 19, 2014 at 4:22am

Alex,Yeah I'm playing with biofilters now mainly because of the fish quantities but you're right about controlling the waste output. So far I'm finding I'm feeding them too much based on the ammonia.

Scott, I'm considering auto feeder too once I can nail down the quantity of food per day.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff S on March 25, 2014 at 9:34am

A different twist on the question: I'm growing fish for my own consumption and not production. If I feed them less and promote slower growth will it affect what size they will ultimately grow to? Can I feed them a lesser quality food? I've been concentrating on rapid growth but I have 800 fingerlings and I will not be able to eat them all at once lol. I'm thinking about separating them to different feed level tanks to regulate their maturity. I have brooding fish and I can't use any more fish.