Laetacara araguaiae food??

[DaneeF]

Hi all,

I've picked up a pair of beautiful Laetacara araguaiae the other day

They are currently eating frozen blood worms and daphnia but researching into them more it says to also give them flakes or pellets. Can anyone recommend a good brand or food type please? There are several online but not sure which ones to go for! Is it any that say cichlid on them?

Also I'd like to feed them every day but feeding them every other day at the moment. If I feed them everyday, is that too much?

 

[Big Dog is cool]

I would feed them normally what they are feed.

 

[Andy Sager]

Hi all,

I've picked up a pair of beautiful Laetacara araguaiae the other day

They are currently eating frozen blood worms and daphnia but researching into them more it says to also give them flakes or pellets. Can anyone recommend a good brand or food type please? There are several online but not sure which ones to go for! Is it any that say cichlid on them?

Also I'd like to feed them every day but feeding them every other day at the moment. If I feed them everyday, is that too much?

Let me start by saying that long before they were making pelleted foods, we were keeping fish just fine so no fish REQUIRES pelleted or flake foods be fed. In truth, as a commercial fish breeder, I never fed any of my fish a pelleted food and I have put literally millions of fish into the trade. So don't panic about that. I actually prefer frozen foods over pellets.
Being that your fish are carnivores, the majority of their diet is going to be meat. The good news is that items like Bloodworms and Daphnia contain chiton in their shells/ exoskeleton which will help with digestion. If you were to add to their diet ( which I recommend doing), I'd add things like black worms ( live or frozen), Glass worms, Brine shrimp or even better, there is a frozen gut loaded brine shrimp which is filled with an algae which will add vitamins to the diet as well as aid in digestion. I'd also stay away from freeze dried foods and stick with live or frozen or flake. Since your fish have rather small mouths, flakes would be easier to eat than things like food disks or sticks.
As for how often to feed, I feed my fish 3 times per day. Been doing that for 60 years. The way you avoid overfeeding is to give them no more than what they can consume in 2 to 3 minutes. I also do not feed the same food twice in a day so that the fish do not get hooked on just one food. I usually do a flake food in the morning, a meat food mid day and a chiton heavy food as the last meal of the day to help push out all the foods of the day's feeding. You'll find that if you do this and do routine water changes weekly ( or twice weekly if the nitrates get too high), you will have very happy healthy fish.