Salmon Care
Salmon Feeding Instructions
Before you feed the fish their first meal, the yolk sac should be completely gone. There should be a faint line where the yolk sac used to be. This is called "buttoned up".
1. Feed Slowly to Keep Your Tank Clean
To keep food from falling to the bottom of the tank (and rotting), sprinkle just small amounts of food. Feeding only takes place while food is falling through the water. Salmon will not feed off the bottom of the tank. If any food is getting to the bottom, slow down and feed less. Slow feeding will also insure that smaller fish get their share.
2. The Very First Feeding: Tease Feeding
This food is best when kept refrigerated in a Ziploc™ bag. You can put a daily supply of food (1/4 teaspoon) in a small plastic cup near the aquarium for convenience. Three to four times a day, use a popsicle stick to dispense food from the plastic cup, sprinkling tiny amounts of food in the water for the fish.
Your salmon learn to eat when you sprinkle a tiny amount of food in the water. This process is called "tease feeding". The first few days the fry just mouth the food and then spit it out. Eventually, they will begin to eat. It can take up to a week of tease feeding before they appear to have the hang of it.
Frequent feedings, 4-8 times a day is done in hatcheries. Like any baby, the fry are growing rapidly and need frequent small feedings.
3. Feeding on the Weekends
In a hatchery setting there is someone 24/7 to oversee the fry. We understand that you can't do this. Feeding fish as described above with a late Friday feeding and an early Monday morning feeding is all we request.
4. Cleaning and Water Quality
Look carefully at the bottom of your tank. Try to remove as much of the "crud" (fish droppings and uneaten food) as possible. Use your gravel siphon to do this. As you vacuum the tank bottom you will probably remove about 3-4 gallons of water. Replace this with water that has sat out for 24 hours or treated with a chlorine removal product. If you do this several times a week, you will most likely never have a water quality problem.
Depending on the number of fish you have, how big they are, and how carefully you are feeding them, we recommend that you start by siphoning a bucket of water every second or third day.
