Look at the fishes mouth, if it points to the surface, danios (superior-B) they are evolved to scavange mainly from the surface. In nature flying insect, pollen or whatever edible lands on the water and lives in the roots of floating vegitation.
🙂 If it is a straight mouth, chiclids (terminal - A) or catfish (inferior - C) they are evoled to eat mid level or from the substrate. The last 2 you rarely see near the surface.
I don't find this to hold true in a fish tank, at least not to a great extent. Perhaps it does in nature. For example, I normally feed only sinking food but for the last few months I've been also feeding flakes at the same time because I was not sure my new fry sized fish at the time would be able to swallow the smallest of pellets I had. Today, just a few moments ago I threw some flakes as a snack, specifically for my harlequin rasboras as they're are way smaller than the rest of the fish. What happened is that the entire bunch of fish in my tank ate them quite happily from the surface. This includes the bottom feeding clown loaches, SAEs, also the denison barbs. Only the pleco didn't come up
🙂
I also kept platies for ages. If you look at their mouth, they are certainly designed to feed from the surface. They like spending time gulping surface scam too. But when I feed my tank with my usual sinking pellets, they're alongside the corydoras at the bottom eating as greedily..Give fish food, they'll learn to eat it from anywhere...eventually..Mine also totally ignored the flakes at first because I had never fed floating food before...Now they know better
🙂
Back on the topic, when you try to feed a community of fish with different feeding abilities, there will always be some pigs and some that don't get that much. In my experience, feeding small pellets and spreading them out when feeding(sinking them) works better because the fish must chase them down...If the fish are strictly surface feeders, sink some slow sinking food for the others first to distract them going down chasing, then drop floating food, etc.. Lots of surface and mid feeders will quite happily keep searching the bottom for food....Feed in small sized food, not one large pellet that only the boldest get to. If you just throw the food at the surface, making to float for a good while, not all fish will compete, not just because they're not surface feeders but because some fish are naturally afraid to swim near the surface in fear of predation of some sort, or because they're not comfortable in the environment, bright lights, too much open space, etc..
And even when you feed bloodworms, try to drop some near the bottom as well as let some slowly sink, rather than just dumping the cube from above, for the fastest to get to at the surface.
As for how much to feed, in my personal experience I would not feed an entire cube of frozen blood worms a day to the type and amount of fish you've got. When I kept my clown loaches and a big bunch of other fish in a 5f tank, I fed the lot 3 cubes on a Saturday...You've got a fraction of the amount of fish and one cube once or twice a week is plenty much for high protein food. The rest of the time try feeding good quality dry food, as low on protein as you can get which is normally around 35%, Good quality dry food should be the main diet as is the only food that will give a complete round of necessary vitamins and minerals. You do not need live food for great colours. You need high quality dry food. Try new life spectrum for example. Live food is too much risk disease wise and I do not bother for that same reason, unless you grow it yourself and it has no access to the outside to get contaminated with pathogenic germs. Someone mentioned feeding in small amounts often which is really great but when there's competition, as its been my case, its often better to feed enough the times you feed to make sure all fish get to some of the food each time, unless you learn their habits and target each type of fish at different times.
Its very hard to say when one is overfeeding. That depends on your size of tank, filtration, level of stocking, maintenance habits, etc..I do feed my fish once a day, now twice because my tank can handle it. I am not one that thinks fish live healthily when half starved because the water quality is better. Feed enough but do the corresponding amount of water changes, have larger tanks with fewer fish, etc..
A lot of fish diseases are either a result of bad water quality or malnutrition. This is specifically the case for larger fish because people do not feed them enough for them to get all they need, or do not feed them the right types of food, low quality cheap food, too high protein food, or food full of wheat and starches, on which they do grow big but not healthy or colourful. Fish fed on life food/fresh food only in fact are the most common suffers. These foods should only be supplemental to keep the fish happy and occupied. They do not represent the best diet, no matter how natural to us it sounds. Our fish do not have thousands of litres of water and kilometres of territory to vary their food. What you give is what you get.
I think I can go on...
🙂
get in a comfortable position so you can see them feed add little bits of feed at a time, until they have all eaten and are looking full ish and none grab the food as soon as it hits the water use this method a few times a day and you won't go wrong, 