How long can healthy fish go without food?

[SteveCGG]

I have skipped days here & there but has anyone gone days without feeding their fish? I am going out of town & my neighbor is nice enough to come by every other day to feed them, but if they couldn't, how long do you think the fish could go and remain healthy (but hungry)? I have Malawi peacocks/haps/mbuna in the tank....

[stevenallenbarnard]

I've gone 2-3 days at a go without feeding malawi cichlids before. give them a few healthy feedings before you go if you can and they should be good even if your friend misses a feeding here and there

[algarciajr]

I have gone 5 days without feeding while on vacation and like Steven said I feed them more the whole week before I leave.

[imagirlgeek]

You could always get one of those battery powered feeders. Not sure what you feed, but they work pretty well with NLS. Another thing you might do is reduce the water temp to slow down their metabolism.

Neither of those are necessities, just a couple things that popped into my head.

[myjohnson]

I have skipped days here & there but has anyone gone days without feeding their fish? I am going out of town & my neighbor is nice enough to come by every other day to feed them, but if they couldn't, how long do you think the fish could go and remain healthy (but hungry)? I have Malawi peacocks/haps/mbuna in the tank....

Ehiem auto feeder on a timer?

I'm regular away from my house 4-5 days at a time.

[mark razmandi]

ya lower the temp will reduce their metabolism, thus requiring less food to keep stable.....i honestly think you could away with a week but dont quote me on that.

[SteveCGG]

You could always get one of those battery powered feeders. Not sure what you feed, but they work pretty well with NLS. Another thing you might do is reduce the water temp to slow down their metabolism.

Neither of those are necessities, just a couple things that popped into my head.

How much food do they hold? Never have used one...I am using NLS 1,2,3 mm (mixed sizes) and usually feed a couple of handfuls every day.

[imagirlgeek]

I've never measured...hmmm...let me check real quick. I'll report back in a sec.

[imagirlgeek]

About 3/4 cup. I was using Cichlid Excel Mini Pellets to test.

Oh...and I have the Eheim autofeeder.

[Mzungu]

Just for the record, I have gone away for 2 weeks and came back to fish who were hungry, but otherwise perfectly fine. :) Granted, they were all in planted tanks, so they had many more goodies to pick on while I was gone.

Autofeeders are wonderful inventions for tanks with no plants and/or fish that eat more than smaller fish like tetras and killies.

[PhishPhreek]

I do not feed my show bettas on saturday, pack them on sunday, mail them on monday, they arrive at the show on thursday and get new water friday. The show is Saturday and they are bagged on sunday and shipped back to me on monday usually arriving wednesday or thursday. So I would say good healthy fish can go two weeks without food of any kind but I keep my bettas verry FAT.

[fshfrk]

You would be better off not to let your neighbor feed them. They can go weeks with out food. If you do let him feed them premeasure out all feedings. Monday a little container. Same with Tue,Wed,Thur. and so on. Lable them. Or just let him feed every 3 days a normal portion you would feed every day so there systems keep moving. Now go to Vegas and win some money so you can get that 800gal tank.

[BeefyG]

+1 A friend at work gave up the hobby a few years back because he went on vacation and the guy he had coming over to feed them overfed them and everything died. But he was on vacation for about three weeks because he went back to Vietnam... not sure how long you have to overfeed to kill everything... my daughter has dumped half container of food in a tank twice and I didn't lose any fish but I got the extra food out that same day when I got home

You would be better off not to let your neighbor feed them. They can go weeks with out food. If you do let him feed them premeasure out all feedings. Monday a little container. Same with Tue,Wed,Thur. and so on. Lable them. Or just let him feed every 3 days a normal portion you would feed every day so there systems keep moving. Now go to Vegas and win some money so you can get that 800gal tank.