Diet

[alexdallimore]

Can anyone give me good advise on a good varied diet for my tank. At the moment I use mostly flake but once a week give frozen blood worms (which everything goes mad for). I am trying to put a varied diet together so fish will be better health and happier. I haven't had any health issues but figured I'd be pretty p##ssed off if I had flakes for 6 days of the week. The fish I have are

red rainbows, blue rainbows, five band barbs, ruby shark, siamese algea eaters. clown loach.

I'm after an idea of other frozen foods and how often I could/should give. i.e. monday bloodworms, tuesday something else etc etc

Cheers


Alex

 

[Bignose]

Well, at the very least look at the labels of the fish foods at your LFS and buy ones with different ingredients. For example, my barbs get a veggie flake and then a general flake on different days. Buy different type of foods, too, like flakes one day, pellets another, etc. Frozen food is a good treat, but it is a staple part of a diet only for a very few select fish. Also, veggies and food you buy at the store are great. Fish like peas, cucumber, zucchini, spinach, etc. My practice in this is, stick the veggie in, if they eat it, great, if not, take it back out. Fish have very sensitive chemical receptors in their mouths and it is incredibly unlikely that they would eat a fruit or veggie that would poison them -- their receptors would tell them not to consume it. I don't buy them very often, but my barbs like orange slices, for example. Most terrestrial meat (chicken, beef, pork) is not good for fish as it does not have the right proteins for them, but food like canned tuna, whitefish, crab, shrimp, etc, is ok. Just don't give a huge amount, kind of like the frozen food. I've put tiny pieces of crab and shrimp in my tanks before, and it was usually gone in a heartbeat.

That said, I am hoping you have a pretty large tank, since you will have somewhat large fish there when they reach adult size. e.g. that clown loach will grow to be larger than a foot, and really do a lot better in shoals of at least 3. The ruby shark, which I think is a red finned shark, usually becomes territorial and will aggressively protoect its territory, and rainbow fish can grow to be pretty long themselves and need lots of swimming room.