Best Food For Cichlids

[strangeworld2002]

Hi,

I have a tank stocked with the following fish:

1x blue acara cichlid
1x salvini cichlid
2x Festivums

At the moment I feed them Tetra Crisps which they seem to like although I would like to feed them something a little more substantial. I have tried them with Nutrafin Sinking Cichlid pellets and bought some New Life Spectrum floating Cichlid pellets but they don't seem to like any of them and keep going back to the Tetra Crisps.

What floating/sinking cichlid pellets do you think are best and have been successful for you?

Thanks.

 

[shroob]

Hikari pellets are often promoted as a good pellet (I use cichlid gold/staple myself). NLS is also meant to be good, so if you have them I would try them some more. You might have to 'starve' them until they make the switch. This normally involves not feeding them for a few days until they eat the food offered. I wouldn't be worried about going a week without food (unless they are young).

 

[juanveldez]

the best way honestly to get your fish to take the pellets is to starve them and only offer the pellets.
every couple days they will eventually move to the pellets.

I use Hikari Bio Gold + as my staple cichlid pellet.

 

[markandhisfish]

i use a combination of tetra colour pro crisp with a main diet of varying frozen foods like krill mysis shrimp red/black mosquito larvae tubifex fine mussels and cichlid mix which i defrost in a small amount of tank water and they love it . prawns are good too . also once a week i give livefood like bloodworm small and now my sev and blue acara are getting bigger im thinking of small mealworms etc . my severum is also happy to eat the cucumber i put in for the plec. this diet seems to do my fish very well

 

[juanveldez]

my wife would never allow me to keep meal worms in the house she would raither die than let me do that but during the summer time I do give them earth worms and grubs from the garden.

 

[shroob]

Yeah, who you share a house with can influence fish food options. I've had crickets, mealworms, earthworms, a look in the freezer and theres been rats, chicks and mice (not for fish).

 

[strangeworld2002]

My fish are a little odd at times. One of my festivum's will happily gorge on the NLS floating pellets while the other will only have the tetra pro crisp. The salvini does not seem to eat much nor does the blue acara but they are only young perhaps 4 inches each. I have recently tried my community tank inhabitants with live bloodworm and as it was my first time feeding live food I was shocked at how crazy they went for it.

I was wondering whether to try any of the Interpret freeze dried food like Krill/Brine Shrimp/Bloodworm/Tubiflex, has anyone had any success with this stuff?

 

[juanveldez]

I use Freeze dried krill as a treat for my large cichlids, my pike loves them. I have also been known to use live mosquito larvae again during the summer months the fish go absolutly nuts over em.