How much to feed young Fahaka?

[grubbster]

Clarkson my Fahaka is growing nicely, I have had him since January when I guess he was 3 or 4 months old (not sure how to tell?), he is now probably 3 to 4 inches plus tail but a lot rounder than he was! we nicknamed him 'spud' as he is quite round!

I'm not entirely sure how to gauge how much to feed him though, most days he gets fed twice - a single defrosted mussel in the morning and 2 or 3 live river shrimps in the afternoon (or 1 big one). Sometimes he'll have a few left over bloodworms from the dwarf puffer feeding (they never manage a whole frozen cubes worth) or a couple of small pond snails (we are willing them to grow more quickly in our snail tank!). I don't think he is big enough to manage cockles in their shells yet. I think this is enough but could it be too much? After a feed he sometimes tends to go and lay in his cave 'panting' - is this normal? After a while he is back out swimming around, trying to get our attention for another feed!

[Nick]

The panting is because these fish use MUCH more oxygen when digesting, sometimes several times what they normally do. The laying around after eating is pretty normal for any animal though. I'd say at his size, once a day to a slightly rounded belly is probably more then enough.

[Pufferpunk]

Be sure to skip feeding of all your fish 1 day/week, for a healthy digestion system. Personaly, I'd feed the fahaka 1x, every other day. I'll bet a lot of undigested food is coming out the other end.