feeding problem

[grizzly]

I bought some hikari algae wafers for my 3 dalmatian mollies today. I only feed them half of one to see how fast they would eat it. But anyways, they can be really aggressive to one another when it comes to feeding time. They will chase and nip each other to defend their food. So i kinda broke the half piece and put it in 3 different spots of the tank. They were still kinda bad to each other. Is there another way to prevent this? and im also noticing that the wafers get underneath my rock bottom, and then they cant reach it. could i tie the wafers to a string or something? Any ideas would be great.

[blu]

You could try algae flakes instead and that way they wont get stuck in your gravel. Or you could make your own algea flakes out of the wafers. The mollies might be less agressive with the food spread out on the surface instead of a couple of spots on the gravel. I just made my own and they work fine.

[squirt_12]

sorry to intrude here but...how do you make them blu????

[blu]

I just crush the algae wafer very finely and add just enough water to make it all stick together then spread it thin and let it dry into a big flake. You have to break it into small pieces to feed though. Oh and I make them on a plastic lid. I guess you could spread it on plastic wrap too,might be easier to get off.....I feed them every other day to my platies and they love them. they get eaten right away so theres nothing sitting on the gravel.

[squirt_12]

would like any community fish eat them???

[blu]

my platies, rummynose tetras and glowlight tetras all eat them. Although the tetras only eat the real small sized flakes but I just break them small enough so that they can all eat them. I dont know about any other fish than the ones I have but I would think any community fish could eat them unless algae shouldnt be part of there specific diet.

[grizzly]

i tried your flake idea blu. it worked very well thanks. I just had to break smaller pieces for the tetras as well. They all went after their own food and there was little if no aggression at all. Thanks again.