Bug bites? Food recommendations for my wet pets please!

[embsidney20]

Hello!

Looking for recommendations for everyday food for my gang that is gonna make their colours pop!

angel fish, honey gourami, peppered cory and green phantom.

Seen a lot of good stuff about bug bites but open to anything recommended. They get blood worms and brine shrimp twice a week, I'd like to replace their flakes / algae wafers (tetra brand)

Thanks!!

 

[Colin_T]

green phantom.

what's a green phantom?

marine mix is prawn, fish and squid blended up and would be a good start.
a basic tropical flake food
frozen brineshrimp, daphnia, mysys shrimp

live brineshrimp, daphnia, micro or grindal worms, mozzie larvae

 

[FishHobby99]

Hello!

Looking for recommendations for everyday food for my gang that is gonna make their colours pop!

angel fish, honey gourami, peppered cory and green phantom.

Seen a lot of good stuff about bug bites but open to anything recommended. They get blood worms and brine shrimp twice a week, I'd like to replace their flakes / algae wafers (tetra brand)

Thanks!!

My fish love Bug Bites & Bug sticks. Can’t say if it affects color. Only thing I’ve noticed to make colors pop are the tank lighting.

 

[Naughts]

Hello!

Looking for recommendations for everyday food for my gang that is gonna make their colours pop!

angel fish, honey gourami, peppered cory and green phantom.

Seen a lot of good stuff about bug bites but open to anything recommended. They get blood worms and brine shrimp twice a week, I'd like to replace their flakes / algae wafers (tetra brand)

Thanks!!

Bug bites are great. River fish eat insects. You can get sinking bug bites for the corys and plec (green lid). The floating ones (blue lid) will suit the angels and gourami. I rotate with bug bites, flakes and live. A variety is good.

 

[Naughts]

My fish love Bug Bites & Bug sticks. Can’t say if it affects color. Only thing I’ve noticed to make colors pop are the tank lighting.

Although my ember tetra are a stunning vermilion. Same tank as the red cherry shrimp.

 

[FishHobby99]

Similiar here, except I find live food creepy & can‘t use it. Tried big long nightcrawlers on the axies. Things squirmed when rinsed. A severed end wiggled madly & burrowed into the sand. The axies never had live food & weren’t interested. Sure the birds enjoyed it when I tossed them ouside.

 

[AbbeysDad]

What you really want is a high quality commercial food as the staple, then add some frozen or live foods as treats.
Here's a deep dive into commercial fish foods that took a fair amount of time to put together!
Frozen foods can be a bit expensive. If you're up for a real challenge and have the space and resources, culturing and collecting live foods can benefit your fish as well as your pocketbook. Here's a collection of articles on culturing and collecting live foods. Happy Fishkeeping!

 

[GaryE]

When I was a kid, word on the fish streets was you needed three flake foods in rotation. Things have developed since then, with way more variety, but I stick to that rule. It has served me well. Variety matters. Bug bites flakes are great, and you can grind down the pellets if that's all you can get for small fish. A colour, growth, veggie food mix in rotation is good.
To me, brands don't matter. I look at fiber content and protein, depending on the result I want. For colour, something with astaxanthin algae is always a good bet.

 

[Oblio]

I just picked up Bug Bites sinking pellets for my Corys. They need to be pre-soaked, and even then my Tetras raid the descending pellets. With the Hikari wafers the large Tetras would grab them but they would often juggle and eventually drop them and they would be available for the Corys.

 

[embsidney20]

Thank you everyone. I ended up buying some bug bites "colour enhancing" flakes and algae wafers (assuming they are also OK for my cories as there is so much insect protein in them!?) for my ground crew. Wow. Just comparing the ingredients to what I was feeding is very interesting.

I'm a bit anal about what I feed my dog and studied canine nutrition. I now have a huge interest in aquatic nutrition... it's very sad, the amount of s**t in the food we are sold for our animals!

My angel fish gorged himself (inevitably) and my gourami males all went into full breeding colours after feeding haha so they must be happy with it.

But what I am most impressed with, is that my phantom actually stayed put whilst feeding when I came to watch instead of darting off to hide!

That speaks volumes to me. Nice to see my handsome little fella for a change

I'd love to start cultivating my own live food for them, a project to study for the future I guess! For now they can stick to their frozen food!

Thanks again, will definitely be recommending this food on my fishes behaviour alone. We'll see if they get more vibrant in time!

 

[embsidney20]

what's a green phantom?

marine mix is prawn, fish and squid blended up and would be a good start.
a basic tropical flake food
frozen brineshrimp, daphnia, mysys shrimp

live brineshrimp, daphnia, micro or grindal worms, mozzie larvae

Its a type of pleco, no idea on L numbers

 

[bigroof]

I use fluval bug bites cichlid formula and hikari cichlid food as staple food for my cichlids. They seem to love both.