How often to feed clown fish?

[merkywater]

BulkRate;912281 wrote: You can tweak the brine shrimp into being somewhat nutritionally useful... if the brine's not newly hatched you can gut-load them with spirulina powder (the pure extract/powder, not the ground up tablets) by stirring some into the shrimp's holding water until green a few hours before serving them up to your tank.

Brine shrimp eat the spirulina, your fish/corals eat the brine shrimp before they could have fully digested it. It's like hiding a spinach salad inside a candy bar! ;-)

Still not a recommended staple, though. If you have something that seems to get stuck in an "eat the pellet, spit the pellet out" loop, try lightly crushing the pellets. My yellow clown goby seemed to have a hard time getting them down until I started doing this a year ago, even when feeding the smallest size (1mm or .5mm I think).

Even if you gut load them they are not a good source of food for every day. The clowns will get to the point of only wanting brine shrimp. Great for treat though. Especially gut loaded.

 

[bulkrate]

Exactly my point. IME the live-brine route's too much of a tight-rope walk; too young and they can't eat the spirulina/too old and they cease to be "live"/ and right in the middle is when you can gut load 'em to make it any more than a circus act for your tank.

I've had better luck with crushed pellets both with my fish, porcelain crabs and corals. Although I did pick up a package of LRS reef frenzy "nano" the other day... looking forward to adding some variety to my tank dweller's diet.