What foods and schedules do you feed your fish?

[kaz]

not sure if the subject made sense lol
but the question is, what type of food, under what schedule, how often do you feed treats and what type are they, how often do you feed live or frozen etc. I currently have algae wafers, shrimp, krill, flakes, dried blood worms, frozen blood worms and frozen brine shrimp. what days should i feed what and how often? should i get other type of foods to, to keep my fish healthy diet?

 

[joannde]

Your variety is good.

Prepared foods have balanced nutrients, so I feel they should be the "staple" food and make up the majority of their diet. I feed various prepared flakes and pellets (both floating and sinking) every morning, alternating between them so that there is variety.
I use any of the others (freeze dried gamma shrimp, frozen bloodworms, etc) in the early evening.

On Sundays I feed frozen defrosted microwaved peas (without the shell) in the morning. In the afternoon I'll either fast them or give them a few flakes.

Twice a week I supplement with fresh vegetables: carrots, zuchinni, yellow squash, yams. These are sliced 1/2" thick, and microwaved for a minute before adding to the tank. They are removed the next morning.

 

[hc8719]

i feed my flakes, fish, in the morning before i leave for class, when i get home, or have someone feed them at 4pm and then again for dinner, 6 or 7pm. occasionally i give them freeze dried brine shrimp or tubifex worm chunks as a snack

if i have veggies, i usally put some zucchini in at night for the pleco and farlowellas who will eat it all by morning.

feeding fish multiple times a day has no adverse side effects to your fish, im sure there is enough food to go around several times daily in the wild, like the amazon river.

people that feed their fish once a day, or skip days, are just lying to themselves, its inpropper care

 

[Zagz]

I vary my tanks all the time. I feed flake or pellet food twice daily, veggies at least once a week. Fruits when possible. Bloodworms as a treat. I don't set a schedule for the treats as I figure the fish don't care what day I put a zuc in the tank. I wing it.

 

[Sicklid]

What types of fish? I used to (for my convicts) feed pellets(protein) in the morning, and spirulina flake (for greens) at night, along w/ fresh veggies once every few days, worms & such less often, mostly when the female was getting beaten up cause she wouldn't produce eggs, and I needed t give her some extra protein. This seemed to work for me.

 

[7Enigma]

people that feed their fish once a day, or skip days, are just lying to themselves, its inpropper care

Here we go again....I can see where this thread is heading. I disagree. In a perfect world all animals would be able to eat whenever they want, as much as they want, never get sick/eaten, and always have a mate. Oh wait, try feeding your fish 5 times a day, how about 10? Surprise they will ALWAYS eat, to the point of death, because they do not have a gut-reflex to say stop eating. If they, in nature, always had a food source, they wouldn't react this way, correct? Nature is not a perfect world.

Fish are coldblooded creatures, which means their metabolism's can be much slower than a warmblooded animal since they are not constantly burning energy for heat. Because of that their food requirements are not high. They can easily subsist (and quite healthy) on feedings every or every other day. This is not inappropriate care, its just different care (and probably closer to the wild where they may be eating more, but are not getting the balanced nutrition of our formulated foods). Where's those staple flake foods in the wild?

Now back to the OP. I used to feed 3 times daily, now I'm down to 2 times per day (nitrAte issues). When I first got into planted tanks I couldn't keep my nitrAte levels up so I was using 3 feedings. Now that my fish are larger (introduction of a BN pleco which really creates waste), I find that my nitrAtes will rise on their own until PWC's, so I've cut out a feeding. This also seems to have reduced some algae as the mid-day feeding was probably not the best time for ammonia to be produced to a high degree.

I feed a random mix of staple flake, FD (freeze dried) blood worms, FD shrimp, FD tubifex worms, algae wafers, shrimp pellets, peas, vegetables. Normally flake in the morning (since I'm tired), and at night either flake or one of the others. I have set feeding schedules, but do not have a set feeding product. It's random, and I feel that's better for the fish since they get a variety that cannot be "planned" for. This also allows for guranteed feedings for some of my less aggressive fish that might not get as much as they need/want with certain foods (FD bloodworms for example which mainly my tiger barbs get since they will guard the surface).

 

[kaz]

I thank you all, i do get alot of nitrate from over feeding so i am cutting down. I just didnt know if what i was feeding was good for their health since on magazines I always see liquid drops of, for example garlic, vitamins etc. my fish are in my sig, and i really dont see my rummys eat anything any suggestions? maybe they eat when everything settles on the bottom and I am not there?

 

[fish_4_all]

I feed them whatever I grab, normally only once a day as the algae wafers are always around til thelights go off and the snails finish them off so they have some sort of food all day long.

Shrimp pellets, dried brine shrimp, blood worms, grindal worms, cyclopseyes, dried blood worms, 3 different flakes all crushed in one container, tubiflex worm cubes, carrots, zucchini, cucumber, green beans, peas, sweet potato, crab bites, betta bites, anything i can really get ahold of that is fish food so the variety is as different as possible. Plan to get some flakes from one source that are made from nightcrawlers, some from kelp, spirulina and others just to increase the variety.

And yes, I do underfeed for the most part and have seen that the mulm has decreased quite a bit because of it. Although once in a while they get feed 4-5 times in a day just because I want to.