ok guys i'm new here. i need to know how much food i can give my 3' black moor and my 3" red cap oranda. they are in a 55 gallon with two 400 marineland filter and a uv light from goldfishconection. the thing is for i year i have them but they grow real slow to me. so my thing is how much pellets i can give them each feeding.the thing is the oranda each time i feed him he goes to the top for air and he does for 1-2 hours then he floats.i fast him then feed him and right back doing the samething. he gets pro-gold pellets but i still don't know how much to give pre feeding.


please help

If you feed pellets, I assume they are the floating type. It's a good idea to soak them a few minutes before adding them to your tank. If you were not pre-soaking the pellets, most likely this is what is causing your oranda to float. Most pellet foods, when dry, have air compressed into the pellet. When a fish eats dry pellets, the pellets expand in the stomach and release the air. It can cause the fish to be constipated which can press against the swimbladder causing it not to work correctly. Short-bodied fish like orandas and ryukins, to name a couple, are more vulnerable since their internal organs are distorted by the body shape.

I suggest that you fast the fish for a day, and then feed them a few thawed out unsalted frozen peas that have been removed from the shells. For the next feeding, use pellets that have been soaked a few minutes. As far as how much to feed, watch how much they can eat in 3-4 minutes, then remove the leftovers. From then on when you feed them that amount and there should be little leftover food.

3'oranda should have 15+pellets for eeach feeding.

Just wondering how often you do water changes belizeanlow? If water parems (pH,nitrite, nitrate and ammonia) are off that can make a fish floaty. Also you can try a variety of different foods with lots of veggies. And check your food is fresh. After opening it doesn't keep more than 6 months..just some ideas

ok my water parems good . i do water change every week off 25% but i see something yesterday when my fish floats and when he stops. the evening when i feed him once more while he was eatting bubbles was coming out off his rear end like crazy as i have told you when he done eating he goes to the top for about 1-3 hour gulp air here in belize the weather is at 92-95 everyday so my tank is always hot like 88-92 degrees. so please tell me what to do the black moor does the same thing goes up for air but he does not float.

Hi and I suggest you put an air stone or bubblewall in your tank to keep the tank well oxygenated as the higher tank temps means there is less oxygen in the tank.

ok can i ask you if this is not too much for the fishes.

2 emperor 400 power filters

1 maxi-jet 1200 for a uv light that i got from goldfishconnection

and i use to have two air diffusers running off a rena air pump 400 which also got from goldfishconnection

but i think thats too much for the fishes in a 55 gallon tank but rick had told me because of the hot degrees buy the diffusers but i took them out.

First, I think your tank proabaly has too much water current. One airstone is plenty, and I would seriously observe the return-water current. I like to use frozen brineshrimp to observe water currents, as they are easily moved around the tank by water movement.

Here's what I did to my emperor to reduce current, and it works great: I used two 5 inches pieces of that 1/2 inch rain-bird sprinkler system tubing, and I cut them once lengthwise. Then I spread the new split apart, and slid it over that little "ramp" where the water flows back into the tanks. That helped alot, but then I added afew slits and holes into the rainbird tubing to create more diffusion. Once I did this, and repeated the frozen-brine shrimp current test, the shrimp merely dropped to the floor of the tank, rather than circulating around and around constantly. regarding that uv filter, I guess you'll just need to get creative in diffusing the water from that.

When I was having floating problems, I tried everything! What a pain! The only time I got it to go away was when I stopped feeding the pro-gold. It never occured to me to halt the pro-gold, as I truly believe it's a high-quality food. my slender pond fish respond great to the progold, but not my round fish. Now, I would not run out and get some other type of fish food to try to get the floats to go away, as nearly all other fish pellets contain a wheat-binder, and I think that's where the problem lies. I've had a lot of succes by feeding hikari brand frozen foods (lots) and hbh super-soft spirulina (available at big-box pet stores sometimes) and then I got a high-end goldfish pellet from Japan that uses a seaweed binder. that japanese food might be beyond your scope of your goldfish keeping, so maybe you should try some home-made gel foods . . . .

Homemade foods are great. Veggies chopped tiny too but I think as Blue said you should have an air bubble wand or stone in there and as much surface splash (that is what dissolves the oxygen most effectively)as you can get from your out filters. Your water sounds hot and the hotter the water the less oxygen.