Fish food

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Feeding freshwater tropical fish is obviously very important part of fishkeeping in general. Depending on species which you keep, it’s necessary to find the most suitable food due to following reasons:

1) Prevent diseases in the tank,
2) Help your fish to be active,
3) Make your fish well-coloured,
4) Stimulate breeding,
5) Proper fry growth.

Division into groups

Generally, fish food can be divided into 2 basic groups; Live-food and „Lifeless“ food. However, this doesn’t mean your fish require one kind of food only. Bear in mind that every species eat differently which is the result of various factors including, but not limiting to it’s locality, momentary season, it’s place in the food chain, size, feeding habits, etc.

Even though live/lifeless food division might look sufficient for beginners, let’s use another division which helps us to determine what to feed your fish. This division is based on habits which determine if fish accepts vegetables, meal based food, or both:

1) Omnivore – Such fish eat animal and plant matter. Despite very common opinion that it’s not necessary to feed omnivores both types of food, they require vegetables and live food as well as water, light, and basically everything what’s necessary for living. Nearly all home-kept fish are omnivores even though they’re considered to be herbivores.

2) Herbivore – Fish which eat plant based food only. Catfish are considered to be part of this group, however they like meat based food too.

3) Carnivore – They’re meat-eating fish. This group includes many African cichlids for instance. Carnivore fish are usually aggressive against other species and shouldn’t be kept with weaker species.

In order to understand what your fish need, you must select food which is acceptable. Acceptable food should fit all of below-mentioned criteria:

1) Fish must be able to eat food. This means the food size must be less than mouth size and what’s more, it must be less than the size of digestion tract. Many fish have larger mouth than their digestion tract, so that if you feed them large pieces of food you can see they spit it out. Basically, they snap a small piece which they can eat. The rest will fall down to the bottom levels of your aquarium. Because for this reason it’s good to keep bottom-dwellers such as catfish, cories and pleco species.

2) Nutriment and vitamins-rich food is necessary for healthy tank. Please read this article in order to understand the role of vitamins and proper feeding.

Now we can divide food into more specific groups which describe each freshwater species in general.

1: African cichlids. Diet: Cichlid flakes, pellets, beef heart.

2: Angelfish. Recommended food: Granules, bloodworms, flakes, brine shrimp, frozen food.

3: Barbs. You should feed them flakes and frozen food.

4: Betta species. Blood worms and granules.

5: Catfish. Catfish as bottom-dwellers like vegetable/meat tablets, but tend to flakes if they can reach top levels. They also love frozen beef heart and tubifex.

6: Danios. Recommended diet: Mostly flakes.

7: Discus. Freeze-dried bloodworms, brine shrimp, granules.

8: Goldfish. Pellets, flakes, granules.

9: Gourami fish. They prefer granules and tablets, but eat beef heart as well.

10: Loaches. Wafers, flakes, frozen food.

11: Plecos. Tablets, flakes (if they can reach top levels), frozen food, tubifex.

12: Rainbowfish. Flakes.

13: Rasboras. Mostly flakes and granules.

14: Sharks. Frozen food, beef heart.

15: Tetras. Nearly all tetra species are small fish which prefer granules, tablets and flakes.

Of course, you can feed your fish other food than mentioned in this general division. Especially if you keep carnivores, you can feed them feeder goldfish (small goldfish born to become a dinner of other fish only), small guppies, mollies, platies, etc. Avoid overfeeding at all cost. There are species which can accept unlimited amount of food, but less is sometimes more. If you feed fish too much for a longer period, they will become fat, which results in diseases, swimming problems and lower water quality (thanks to food which decompose as uneaten). Especially uneaten food threatens all living organisms in your tank. As time goes by, uneaten food turns to fungus or gets sucked into filter.

Tips

Advantage of beef heart is that it helps fish to be coloured nicely. Disadvantage is that fish will easily „forget“ about other food, what’s potentially dangerous. Beef heart results in fat bellies too. Unlike beef heart, vegetables are full of vitamins and should be put into tanks. However, there’s a big problem lying here; If fish aren’t fed vegetables from juvenile age, they will probably ignore it.

Fish feeding should reflect their appetite. This means nearly all species require food twice a day. Feeding on a random basis isn’t recommended, however it can be seen in nature (there’s no ’feeding time’) in the wild.

Naturally, if you keep fish for breeding purposes, it’s necessary to follow these feeding rules:

1) Increase amount of live food during the breeding period. Live food stimulates breeding. If you keep herbivores, don’t use meat based food of course.

2) Feed fish more than usually.

3) The fry usually accepts Artemia Salina. If you use other food, they will probably have troubles. Moreover, many fish will probably die. Juvenile specimens should be fed 5 times a day.

As the last point of this article, bear in mind that quality usually costs more. On the other hand, it’s better to feed fish quality food than buying new fishes each two weeks. Don’t buy low quality food, otherwise your fish will be unhappy, coloured poorly, etc. The last thing you want your aquarium to look like is that it’s dead.

Video

Feel free to download our video here (approximately 38 MB, 640x480px). Another video shows fish fed blood-worms (approximately 110 MB).

Pictures

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Fish food

has been viewed times since June 30, 2009.