feeding rainbows

[Mazdaman]

Well i've had my rainbows now for around 6 weeks. They are great fish and really interesting to watch them color with age. Anyways to the question at hand. Recently I noticed they stopped eating the flake food that I have. They are still eating the frozen shrimp and blood worms, but I'm wondering what other food would work for them. I just want to keep a nice varied diet for them. Any suggestions out there?

 

[fishyfishyfishy]

my rainbows LOVE peas... i just thaw a couple of the frozen ones for a treat. Just be careful to cut them into teensy pieces because they will put large pieces in their mouths and then they can't swallow!

 

[webmoose]

mine like algea tabs as well... they play keep away with them.. very interesting to see them swim around with them the disc's in their mouths.....

Moose

 

[JohnPaul]

I only had my rainbows (dwarf neon/praecox) a short time, but I found that they tended to be pretty unresponsive to food on the surface of the water, but much more excited about food in the water column. Once I discovered that, I would be sure to add my flake food somewhat near the exit stream from my hob filter. The flow would force the flakes into the water, tumbling all the way, and the rainbows would go nuts. Same when I tried feeding freeze-dried bloodworm; floating on the surface, the rainbows might pick once in a while. But forced down into the water and tumbling, the rainbows would be all over them.

I am wondering, since you say they used to take flakes and now they don't, how often were you feeding them frozen/live food? Perhaps it was too often, and they got "spoiled" by the good stuff and so are refusing to eat the flake. I suspect if you feed flakes only 6 days a week and live (or frozen) only 1 day a week, they'd go back to eating the flake pretty fast.