Best Foods to Encourage Healthy/Colorful Fish

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mikeyerushalmi

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
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Jul 31, 2016
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Hello everyone! I have a 46 gallon freshwater tank with a mix of awesome fish. I have platies, an opaline gourami, clown loaches, boesemani rainbow fish, agassizi cory cats, a spotted high fin pleco, Serpae and bloodfin tetra.

Everyone is farely new to the tank, with my platies being the only fish I've had for a while. I shop from an awesome local pet store and my
"fish guy" suggested I try Freeze Dried Spirulina Brine Shrimp and Blood Worms from Hikari. I have been feeding the fish with a net from the bottom, so both mid and top feeders are well fed. He mentioned this food will make them more colorful and is great for overall health.

Your opinions would be very much appreciated.
 
...i dont think its bad information...as you know they make color enhance food plus everything ur fish guy said is true...spirulina is a great natural color enhancer...omega super color one flake food is amazing.....
 
Try soaking the food in a cup of aquarium water before feeding so some will sink easier and all fish have better chances...
Both are good foods and variety is good...
Maybe try some frozen next?
 
Heard that soaking takes also rids the food of the nutrients needed to build a healthy diet. This is why I switched in the first place. Oh no!
 
I like frozen food the best. It feels to me like it's less steps away from being live- which is ideal. I would love to have live cultures, but it's just a little inconvenient and can smell bad.
But a good flake food is also important because it provides a balance of nutrients. My favorite flake brands are new era, new life spectrum, and omega one. Look at the ingredients before you purchase- the less grain fillers and "fish meal", the better. Although the ingredients in new era are not all that impressive, supposedly what sets them apart is that they process their food cold, so that proteins are not destroyed by heat (have not done a lot of research on this so I'm not sure how much truth there is to it). Fish meal is the equivalent of animal biproduct in your cat and dog food.
I like to alternate frozen and flake every other day, and feeding a different frozen food on each one of the frozen days. Sometimes i feed flake as an appetizer and frozen as the main course an hour or so later. Small feedings throughout the day are better for your fish health than one large meal. I use a turkey baster to squirt frozen food down into crevices of plants and hardscape so that my kuhli loaches can find some when they scavenge after dark.
I agree with coral bandit on soaking food in a cup of tank water. I do this with all my foods, even flake. For many fish, eating off the surface is not natural, so I like to soak it and pour it in the tank so the food is evenly dispersed at all levels.
Although a good diet is very important to fish health, let's not forget that water quality is equally, if not more important, and overfeeding can jeopardize this:) make sure not to put more food in the tank than your fish can eat before losing their excitement.
 
Great suggestions! I will buy flakes then as well. I have heard lots about New Life Spectrum. Instead of soaking food, I use a long net. I pour food into the net dry and let a little at a time out from the bottom of the tank. Food floats upward and the bottom/mid feeders get their fill first. It's a little time consuming but it works. I enjoy watching them eat anyway. Ha!
 
Heard that soaking takes also rids the food of the nutrients needed to build a healthy diet. This is why I switched in the first place. Oh no!
Oh no is right! Where did you here this???:whistle:

Maybe this can help?

But more importantly, regardless of which side you fall on the issue of whether or not a goldfish has a stomach; What is a fact is that this small or rudimentary goldfish stomach along with their long intestinal tract tends to loose moisture readily because of this small stomach and long intestinal tract.
So soaking dry goldfish foods is ESSENTIAL for prevention of bloating and gut Aeromonas infections. As well, too high a protein diet can cause issues, which is why a diet rich in slow to digest plant based material such as algae is essential (Spirulina is best), but low in certain proteins that require short intestinal tracts.

This is taken from;
Fish Nutrition | Quality Fish Food Information & Aquarium Health
Specifically to be found under the FREEZE DRIED section of the article...
Now your fish may be different but I would strongly reconsider with freeze dried foods...
After that I would refer you to this link for best food...:whistle:

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f12/best-prepared-food-crude-analysis-335656.html
 
Can someone explain why fish meal is 'bad'? It's just ground up fish, so wouldn't feeding it be like them eating a whole fish, just pureed first? I understand why fillers like wheat aren't good, but fish meal doesn't seem like it would be.

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Ahh, gotcha.

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