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2. Fish have stopped eating.


Whenever a fish stops eating it should be considered a major warning sign.  On occasion fish do find themselves full but they should always react to a food source.  I'm sure most of you reading this have heard that "fish will eat themselves to death".  That is a myth.  Fish die from uneaten food that degrades the water quality.  Fish are not mindless creatures that consume food to the point of exploding their intestines.  I can't think of any creature on the planet that actually does this other than humans who consider 3 Big Macs and a large fry a good start.


Fish should always want to eat.  If your aquarium inhabitants are not responding to food it would be a safe bet to say that you have grossly overfed the tank.  The water quality has depleted to such a point that ammonia and or nitrite has taken over and the gills of the inhabitants are now burning off making respiration difficult.  If you couldn't breath would you want a sandwich?

Captive fish should be fed once every other day, the amount that they can eat within 2 minutes.  2 minutes after feeding all the food should be consumed and all the fish should have eaten. 

If it's just one fish in your tank that isn't eating, there could be many reasons.  Not eating is a sign of a stressed fish.  Follow the links and scroll down the list of symptoms.  The faster you diagnose the problem, the easier it will be to fix.

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