A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO LIVE FISH FOOD

INRODUCTION

Feeding your fish a varied diet is key to their health, color, and breeding success. While flakes and pellets are convenient, live food can be a powerful nutritional boost. In this guide, we'll explore different live foods you can even cultivate at home.

 TYPES OF FISH FEEDS

1) White Worms (Enchytraeus Albidus) are one of the live foods that can be cultivated by the aquarist. They are small terrestrial worms that are useful because they can be cultured easily and are available when needed. Mature white worms (2cm long) are grown in boxes of damp soil, feeding on pieces of bread or baby cereal food placed on the surface, where they are scraped off when needed and used from a worm feeder. Fishes should not be fed white worms exclusively, as they have a high fat content and can cause obesity.

2) Daphnia is another live food; they are tiny water fleas that are found in large numbers in ponds during the warm months of the year, especially farmyard ponds that contain rotting organic matter. They are available live from very few dealers. The animal is very nutritious and hardly any fish will refuse them. If it is used as part of a mixed diet, the fish may refuse to eat other foods; hence, it is advisable not to mix daphnia with other foods. Since water fleas feed predominantly on algae from which they obtain oil, they serve as a laxative by relieving fish of constipation and indigestion; hence, they are confined to the space of an aquarium.

3) Brine Shrimps are also crustaceans that live naturally in the salt lakes of the United States of America. Their eggs are available in small jars from a few dealers and can be hatched in salt water. Newly hatched brine shrimps are very good food for young fishes, the adults are relished by the larger fishes, and are difficult to produce, hence they are a little expensive and are best left for marine aquarists (i.e., those keeping fishes in seawater aquariums).

4) Earthworms make very good food if cut into pieces. They are one of the best foods for predatory cichlids like the Jewel fish (Hemichromis fascinatus). Although other fishes will eat them too if the worms are finely chopped, you should remember to rinse the chopped worms thoroughly in a net to remove slime and earth before feeding them to the fish.

5) Shrimps and fish eggs also make a useful addition to the diet of your fish. The shrimp should be cooked slightly and the hard outer cover peeled, after which it can be suspended inside the aquarium with a thread so that the fish can pick on it. Small quantities of eggs obtained from table fish or from the underside of the shrimp are also good food.

 For greater variety in the diet of your fish, other live feed like mosquito larvae and small bloodworms from rainwater puddles make excellent food. So also are freshly swatted flies and aphids from the garden plants outdoors

AQUARIUM CARE: FEEDING THE FISH II

 FEEDING THE FISH

A BALANCED diet is essential. Most of the commercially available dry fish foods are almost always unbalanced. In many cases, the vitamin content will gradually decline at room temperature, and since the majority of the dry food for tropical fish commonly used will only keep for about 3 months, it is always advisable to buy fish feed in many small packs rather than in one large pack.

The feed could preferably be kept absolutely dry in a refrigerator. However, all fishes appreciate a change of diet and will thank you for your consideration with more interesting behavior, better colors, greater readiness to breed, and better general well-being. This change of diet should be supplemented with live food; the majority of which now come in irradiated freeze-dried forms to make sure that they are disease-free.

A few that can be found handy in some major aquarium shops;

TUBIFEX: This is a traditional favorite food relished by most fish. They are small red worms that live at the bottom of streams and rivers, particularly where large amounts of organic matter are present. Therefore, it is difficult for the aquarist to collect them from their habitat. It is, therefore preferable to buy Tubifex from pet shops where they are already clean, freeze-dried, and concentrated into cube forms.

From personal experience, Tubifex tubes could probably be the most exciting feed to use for fish. The cube can be stuck to the front inside wall of the aquarium. The fishes in the tank will immediately come forward and bite off pieces of worm excitedly until satisfied. You need not bother to remove the rest of the worm since they seldom pollute and in most cases fishes return to the feed for further fill.

AQUARIUM CARE: FEEDING THE FISH

FEEDING THE FISH

However carefully you add the fish to your tank they will look very unhappy for a while. Turn the lights out, and leave them overnight to get used to their new home. A feed with fish flakes the next day will make the fish feel at home.

If you already have an established tank, it is advisable to quarantine new fish before adding them to an existing populated tank, and the cheapest way to do this is to purchase a simple one-piece one foot glass or plastic tank which will need no gravel or plants. This can be used solely for quarantine and as an hospital tank.

Leave the fish in this tank for about three days during which any disease harboured by the fish would be evident for which it can be treated using available chemicals from your dealer. The fish can then be introduced into the tank in the same way before.

When you add new fish to an established community, there will probably be a certain amount of harassment of the new arrivals by the original fish. Try to divert their attention by giving them a good feed when the fish is intoduced.

If you notice that your new fish is not thriving well, do not hesitate to lodge a complaint with Mrfish limited, Email: catfish192001@yahoo.com

It might be worth testing the nitrite levels in your tank