Feeding Your BBRs
 

I have received quite a number of PM concerning how to feed the BBRs so I thought that I will write something to help out.

It is crucial that you must find some live food or food of extremely high protein content and very easily disseminated by the BBRs. This is crucial so that BBRs can eat as much as they can, when they can. Pellet food, are not recommended for feeding, even those that are specially made for babies. Dissemination of food is crucial for the perfect growth, and development of your fish. You could find many people who say that their BBRs have developed weird shape stomach and they may argue that it's a bad fish. That's quite wrong, it is always the case that they use pellet food to feed. BBRs do not, all of a sudden, develop weird shape stomach, because they are bad fish or from bad stock. It is always because of what was fed to the BBRs.

You must never feed too much at each sitting, or leave too much left over live food in the pond. This will sure to bring gill problems for your fish. Feeding too much is a normal fault of most inexperience keepers. They think that by feeding them a lot in one go, the fish will grow to be big and beautiful. Patience is quite a virtue, when it comes to feeding BBRs. Fish that grow steadily are usually fish that will grow to become Champions. If you want your fish to grow quickly, and beautifully, please feed a little at a time, but increase the frequency of your feeding. I usually feed my BBRs with only dapphnia until they are much bigger. I often mix in one small meal of baby size pellet food (or adult food that has been crushed to a powder state) after the BBRs have changed colour fully. It is crucial that you introduce duck weed as soon as they can eat it too, since this will ensure the best complexsion. You can also use blood worm in your feeding when the BBRs are a bit bigger. I hear that you have gel food in SG and that's probably can be substituted for live feed. One more thing, I also give food at night. Please be advise that BBRs sleep at night and you should not leave too many live feed in the pond then.

The key words that you need to keep in mind all the time for BBRs are, to look at their stomach when they eat. Learn to know when they are full and when to stop. And please, be patience, never feed too much when you miss a meal, and never use your ego in raising fish. You have to keep your work regular for a long time, and do not change your schedule of feeding suddenly. Fish, like people, like to have a clean, peaceful and productive environment to grow. Try not to do too many changes suddenly with regards to your fish, ever. Introduce new factors slowly.

As soon as the BBRs start to change their colour fully, you should consider decreasing the feeding regiment accordingly. Hope that this will help ok.

Sawasdee krap

Pat

Some query?
 

Hi Pat,

just to clarify, you mean once they change colour completely, we can start feeding pellets and duckweed? Live food is difficult to maintain...

What is gel food?

Thanks Alex

If you can, continue to feed your ranchu as long as you can with daphnia. If feeding live is too troublesome and too expensive, you can always buy the frozen ones manufactured by "Hikari". I think by now you should be able to suppliment it with frozen blood worm. I find that "Hikari" blood worm is better and you can hardly see any "dead before frozen" bloodworm in them. The "Hikari" bloodworms are also cleaner.

My preference is for high protein (over 50%) pellets. Feed small amounts and more frequently. Using an auto-feeder is good as however busy you may be, you will not miss your feeding schedule. I always adjust my feeding quantity such that my ranchu finishes its food within 3 minutes.

As for BBRs, it is always good for you to keep about 10 pieces or more so that they will be more lively and rushing for food every time you come to the tub. Also it is very difficult to set your auto-feeder if you have too little BBR to feed.

There are no hard and fast rule to feeding and you should adjust your feeding pattern and type of food to suit your needs.

The basic rules are:
1. Dried is good. (Just make sure that it is quality food)
2. Frozen is better.
3. Live is best.
4. The stomach should never be wider than its head.

One suggestion about the number of BBRs, you should be mindful of the space that you keep the fish. Dapphnia will generate a lot of fine particle waste in the water, and the more fish you have together, the faster that the water condition will deteriorate. A good thing to remember is that the fewer the fish that you keep, the better it is for the fish. This is true for all size of fish.

Thanks
 

I got 2 CBRs not long ago (1 mth plus), have been feeding them with Ranchu lord pellets supplement with duckweeds during weekends. not sure if this is good enough for them.. hope their growth is not stunted.

but thanks for the advice. think I will try the frozen daphnia and frozen bloodworms. :)

Thank you for the above advice.
Can you provide guidance on how much water is considered optimal and minimal for BBRs, CBR/Tosai, Nisai, etc? eg. 50L best and 30L minimal for BBRs to grow well.

For item one dry pellets will be fish born or chanko (high protein)
item 2 frozen hikari blood worms
item 3 fresh Artemia (Sea Monkeys)
item 4 Monitor yourself

Live is always best. The question here is how convenient to get live feed for your ranchu. In Singapore it is troublesome to buy and expensive to feed your ranchu live food. Therefore, most hobbyist resort to frozen. "No fish, prawns also can". Personally I find subtle difference feeding them live or frozen.

One big problem is space. Not every one of us is fortunate enough to be blessed with space. At most we are only able to accomodate 2 to 3 pieces of 3 ft tubs. This constrain pose great challenges to our hobby.

Sunlight to cultivate algae for your ranchu to eat and also improve their colour is very important. Free veggie for your ranchu as well.

Sometimes your cost of feeding your ranchus may cost more than the cost of your ranchu itself. Take for example that you have a pair of $10/- each ranchus and spend $1/ everyday on daphnia and another $5/- on pellet food every month. This works out to $25/- monthly to feed your pair of ranchus.

It will make logical sense for you spend on a more expensive pair of ranchus at the onset. A pair of say $200/- each of ranchus will make more logical sense here than spending on the $10/- ranchu. The other thing is that the appreciation of value of your ranchu will also increase many fold as it grows and I believe the the level of satisfaction also increase.

I always believe in following your heart. Know the basics and adapt them to your needs and limitations. Even amongst the grand master breeders in Japan, they do things differently. 30 years ago and today. they also do it very differently. Improvements in technology and science also changes the way things are done.

The thing here is to be enterprising and to experiment.