Constipating my fish has become a real concern for me, as I'm sure it is for all of you. I do not have any fellow "fishkeepers" in my circle of "physical" friends, so I have nothing to compare my methods of feeding with. I've started threads before about overfeeding, but those threads mostly spoke of pellet feeding. What about flakes? Once in a while I still feed flakes to my fishies.

Of course I soak the flakes first, but another thing I try to do is leave the flakes in the largest possible form. In other words, I don't crumble them up. My big oranda would never get any if I did, his aim isn't too great and he misses a lot of what he goes for. (I'm sorry, but it's funny as heck to see). Sooo, when I feed the flakes, they are large flakes and usually about 3-4 per fish, is this too much?

Pro-gold and Hikari Gold, I feed 4 pellets each.

I know the rule about feeding as much as would fit in their eye, and a fast followed by peas, but I sure would like to hear how other members measure food.

Thanks!

http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/...showtopic=66776

Remember- when you are feeding flakes or pellets, it is a total mass or, if you wish, volume of food that you are feeding. If you smashed those flakes up into a pellet - would their mass or volume be the same as the pellet? If so -feed the amount of flakes that make up the same amount of food as the 4 pellets do.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. Sometimes I try rationalize too much... I think it would be dangerous to justify feeding more because I enjoy it. It's their health that's at stake.