Feeding habits

At the beginning of our project my fish didn´t know when feeding time was, so I always had to wait for them to come up to the water´s surface, otherwise they wouldn´t really recognize that there is food. That would be a problem because I have to remove the pellets after 2 – 3 minutes or it can cause eutrophication, what would result in the fish´s death.

I started feeding them twice a day, morning and evening circa 5 – 7 pellets. My red betta Jonah was always a little bit picky – first I had to make sure that he noticed the food and I started giving him only 3 pellets. If he ate all I gave him a little more – sometimes he ate sometimes he didn’t.

Minki and Gypsy were always eating good, especially Gypsy! He is always eating fast and the most. I never have to worry about him! I usually feed him first, then the others which takes me a few seconds – Gypsy is finished with eating most of the times!

Interesting at the first day of the project was that Jonah was chasing Minki and Gypsy away from the food. It was his territory so it was his food. With the knowledge I have now, I fully understand why Jonah chased Gypsy much more than Minki – normal behavior between two male bettas – protecting their territory! I think that gypsy was hiding instead of fighting because he is smaller than Jonah – so he might knew that he wouldn’t have had a fair chance! 

But on the other side I had Gypsy in a jar with Sam, which has been bigger than him too. But in that case, Gypsy wasn´t the chased one! That could be a proof for my theory that Sam was sick.

To come back to the feeding – I don´t have problems with feeding them anymore. All of them eat well and know when it´s feeding time! In the evening I close the curtains, so when I open them in the morning they are coming to the surface – knowing that their food is coming soon!

Now I usually feed them only once in the morning because at the earlier stage there have been leftovers I had to take out most of the time.  But nowadays they eat their food in the morning and I only have to remove food barely.

I also recognized that Gypsy eats pellets even if they lie on the ground of his jar. I saw him doing that a few times now! He always  seems to be hungry, but as we know their stomach is as big as their eyes and I’m actually wondering already that 7 pellets fit in their!

Something they all do is the spitting out of their food! Minki often takes two pellets at the time, realizes that it is too much and spits them out one at a time. After that she eats one by one. Jonah just eats one, spits it out and eats it again. What I noticed is that when they spit the pellets out there is a substance around them, what might be saliva. As everybody might know already, is Gypsy the one who does that least!

I will observe their eating behavior further, maybe I will notice sometime that also the others eat from the bottom or something else interesting!!!