Let's Talk About Fish Food

[VsKitchen]

: learning to eat veggies is always tough :

Interesting that not all fish love the wonder food at first bite. I don't know enough about cichlids to know if it's a species food preference. Of course there are all types of personality of fish. Do you tend to follow the same recipe each time you make it? Have the fish been eating the made mix since you have had them or do you change up foods?

 

[Madness]

Same recipe for the most part. But have not made it for about 6 months. My blender blew up last time, so I said that I would not make it again until I could afford a good food processor. So it has been awhile since they (my long time family members) have eaten the food. The new members have never tried it.

But all-in-all I think it went well.

 

[Mikey]

I use almost the same line-up, but I try to add fresh vegetables whenever possible.

Great topic btw. I'll be checking frequently to see how your DIY fish food turns out Madness!

 

[Madness]

Well, I fed the family the homemade food for breakfast. With poor & good results again. The 300 acted like they were not hungry. Still none of my pairs that are in their own tank, touched it. My Vieja/Paratheraps tank, and my Parachromis tank devoured it again. All of my grow outs and babies, loved it still also. My Dovi and Festae were not impressed. So, looks like a work in progress for the big fish, but a wonderful success with the little ones. unk: unk:

I suggest the rest better start liking it, cause thats all they are getting to eat until they do. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

 

[DMD123]

For fun I got 25 large crickets and the fish just went to town on them. So a fun little treat!

Have been looking at trying the Xtreme aquatics foods and possibly Dainichi foods.

 

[Spyral]

Massivore, NLS cichlid, frozen blood worms and frozen mysis.

Sometimes I toss in some shrimp or tilapia.

Algae wafers and cucumbers for the bottom feeders.

 

[DMD123]

In nature these fish would not have many of the items found in fish foods. What I think is a missing element in fish foods is... Insects! Thats why I try to use the crickets as occasional snacks. I have been thinking about using the freeze dried crickets that are sold for reptiles, the instructions do say that they can be used for fish. Why are insects not used in fish foods? It is a primary food item for many fish.

 

[Adonijah]

Nightcrawlers make my fish explode in size. When I had a runt in my 75, I would feed him(miss ya trimac) a worm every day.. a week and a half in and he started fighting back

 

[DMD123]

I use nightcrawlers too. I have had great success with them. The fish seem to readily take them and yep good growth by using this as a food item.

 

[DMD123]

I went ahead and ordered some Xtreme to try out. You can go through Facebook and order the stuff as a sample size. It is a half a pound bag for $10, which includes shipping. Not too bad a price... will see if the fish will eat it.

Here is the link for those interested: http://www.facebook.com/XtremeAquaticFoods

 

[gobluecichlids]

I just ordered another 5lb bucket of NLS for $50 w/free ship from Petsolutions.com. $10 per lb is not a bad deal.

 

[DMD123]

Not a bad deal at all.

I have tried NLS already and was not blown away by the product. The claim of the color enhancement with a 10 day exclusive feeding is bunk. I used up the container and even went through a second before I switched back to Omega One.

The funny thing is I think the differences in food are pretty minor. You could not do any type of controlled testing to prove one product is better than another. This was an issue I brought out on MFK with the big NLS nut RD. He had to concede on that one and then started talking about the product with saltwater fish. I still have to go back to my original idea that a lot of the aquarium fish we keep have a high insect diet. These insects eat plant matter so essentially are gut loaded with the veggies fish need. So why do foods not contain them in it?

Where exactly is a Central American cichlid going to have access in nature to: herring, krill, salmon, etc...?

 

[DMD123]

Follow up on the Xtreme.

Got the food I ordered quickly. So no problems that way.

I can tell you this I should not have listened to the person at Xtreme about the pellet size. They suggested the Pee Wee (1.5mm) for my 6"+ fish and my fish dont even see it. It is way too small for them! I was also expecting a slower sinking pellet but nope these start sinking as soon as they hit the water.

This was basically a useless purchase at this point, will not work in the big tank with the fish in there. So I will save it for whatever I growout or raise in my 29g. This is why I wanted a smaller sample to try , so that I wouldnt sit on $10 worth of food. Takes a long time to use up the little tiny pellets like these. Oh well more motivation to grow something out.

 

[Adonijah]

I feel ya DMD I feel the same way about the Omega marine pellets I purchased. The fish from the last order eat it but the 75 gallon is not impressed.

 

[DMD123]

I use a mix of the the small, medium and large Omega One floating cichlid pellets and no problem. The sinking Omega One small cichlid pellets are just like the marine, just a little bit too small. You think they should at least be the same size as the floating.

 

[Ratlova30]

Just thought I'd share. My mothers betta got a little spoiled and the only thing I could get him to eat was either frozen blood worms or tubiflex worms, had to be shaped like a worm. I knew he wasn't getting the nutrition he needed(despite his remarkable healing, we bought him as a white betta and he's almost all the way black now with green and red sheen ) I also have a newly acquired betta that is on the picky side(probably from not feeling too well). Anyways I've been trying several different brands of pellet foods with rejection after rejection. So last night when I was at the store I caved and bought some omega one betta buffet flakes(I prefer feeding pellets) well as soon as they hit the water they were devoured by every single betta. None of the bettas spit it out once. I've tried flake foods on my bettas before but they never seemed to want it but with the omega one there was no hesitation. Well worth the money spent(I think I paid $4 for .42oz) It certainly will be nice to not have to thaw out blood worms every single night.

 

[DMD123]

I like the Omega One products. I recently switched my betta over to it also, but went with the pellets.

 

[Ratlova30]

I didn't see any omega one pellets or I would have bought those instead. I'm always worried about swim bladder disease with the bettas and goldfish which is why I opt for pellets. But I guess flakes once or twice a week won't harm them. I usually almost always thaw out frozen food every night but I needed something that the bettas could eat when I wanted to feed the fish shrimp or beef heart.

 

[DMD123]

I got my pellets at Petco. But I think Petsmart has them too. They just hide them over by the betta and not in the regular food.

 

[Ratlova30]

Petsmart is where I was at, haven't been to petco for years, The brand they had by the bettas was either HBH or tetra, can't remember which and they're huge pellets, seemed the only bettas large enough to eat them were the dragon scale bettas, the rest of the bettas were too small to eat them so they sat in the bottom of the cups getting fuzzy. Which has presented another problem for me when I was looking for a food for them is that most brands of pellets were too big for some of my small bettas. I used to use Hikari betta pellets and my large/normal sized males could eat them but my females and small males couldn't so I just started feeding frozen worms every night.