I still am confused about feeding my fish..I feed them once a day, and they eat as if its a free meal voucher at McDonald's and finish it up instantly. Tank contains 30 tetra neons and 12 guppies. 45 gallon tank
for schooling species the guide is as much as they can eat in 1-2 mins. if flakes hit the bottom you may be overfeeding. sounds like you've got it about right
I agree that you are feeding correctly with what you are keeping. I have to feed smaller amounts but twice a day. My school of redeye tetras are gobblers, my 5 angelfish are slightly slower, and my betta wants to dine with mannerly slowness. By the time the betta is ready for his 4th bite, the food is already polished off. He then piddles around plant roots looking for missed morsels.
For a fish's stomachs being the size of their eyes is true with guppies and some other tetra species...it's perfect. But that's going to vary by speices. For instance, have you ever something like an Oscar gulp down feeder goldfish? But usually the fish with larger stomachs like certain cichlids and certain tetras like the pirhannas have bigger stomachs because they are predators and don't always get to eat everyday.A good rule to go by is fish stomachs are only as big as their eyes.
Feed about that much per fish.
I feed once and sometimes twice a day.
I want to confess that as a new fishkeeper, I am almost sure that I underfed my fish. I was totally freaked out about overfeeding. I read a lot about everyone should get a couple bites, the stomach is the size of their eye, etc. I now feed once a day, and I feed them until I feel confident that they are not starving. Once the mad dash appears to be over, I start scaling back to check if they still are interested in eating or not.
I think you just have to find a rhythm that works for you (and them).
Your tank size coud still accommodate a schoo of 6 cory catfish or 10 pygmy cories. But if you substrate is gravel, I would choose the pygmy cory rather tahn the full size. The fill sized cories try to dig and wind up harming their bardels. The pygmies eat around one piece of gravel and in the little spaces at a time.As long as you have some type of clean up crew fish/snails/shrimp there shouldn't be to much worry about over feeding.
Underfed fish eat tank mates.