Food Tips For Healthy Aquarium Fish

Packed dry food is almost all the time unbalanced and doesn’t assure the fish the nutrients he needs. Besides this, the dry food looses its nutrient and vitamin contents at room temperature after a while. This is why it is better to buy small packs of dry food rather than a big bag that will not be good after a few weeks. Breeders also suggest that dry food must be kept in the refrigerator.

These are a few arguments why fish owners should make sure they give their fish a balanced diet. Otherwise, the fish’s health will suffer.

Besides giving dry food, a change of diet is also recommended from time to time. The fish will be really happy to receive a new type of food with a different color or taste. A small change like this will make their life a little more pretty. Many owners create diversity by giving dry food in one day and live food the next day. With the latest technologies, the live food is also sterilized and ready to be served.

The majority of the aquarium shops sell two types of food: foods that are freeze dried and flake foods.

Foods that are freeze dried

In any aquarium shop you will find foods that are freeze dried and the fish love this type of meal. A freeze-dried food is usually formed of a single animal-ingredient. The most common are blood worms, mosquito larvae, and Tubifex worm. Breeders recommend that freeze-food is combined with flake type food.

Tubifex is the most popular freeze-dried food and I will talk about this a bit.

TUBIFEX – these are small red worms that can be collected from the bottom of some rivers or streams, especially where a lot of organic material can be found. It is very hard for an owner to collect these worms by himself so it is better to buy them from a specialized shop where they are clean, freeze-dried and sterilized. This is a traditional favorite food for most fish and it comes in cube forms.

From personal experience I could say that fish love Tubifex and they could eat them all day. Feeding the fish with Tubifex is done by placing the small worm cube to the front inside wall of the aquarium. As soon as you put it there, all the fish will jump at eat and start eat it till there’s nothing left. You will see how excited and satisfied they are after such a full and delicious meal.

If somehow there are some leftovers like bits and pieces of worms, don’t remove them because the fish will come back to eat the rest of the meal after they swim a little.

Flake foods

This type of food is also popular among owners and loved by fish. The breeders and sales persons from the shop recommend brands like Tetra®, Aquarian®, and Wardley®. The Aquarian and Tetra have a lot of different flakes specialties to choose from and all three of them have a good quality and an acceptable price.

Read more information about feeding tropical fish

Feeding Tropical Fish

Newly bought fishes should not feed for a day after their arrival. They are usually too disturbed to eat, and if the food is not eaten it decomposes and pollutes the water.

After twenty-four hours, feed sparingly once a day. When the fishes have settled down and are eating regularly, start twice-a-day feedings. You should always feed your fish sparingly. You should not over feed the fishes. You should give no more dry food than can be consumed off the surface of the water in one and one-half to two minutes. Always leave the fishes hungry enough to search over the bottom for any food that may have dropped from the top.  The average fish’s stomach is the size of its eye. It can eat at o meal only about as much food as would cover one eye. Very few fishes can eat in the dark.

Very few fishes can eat in the dark. Never feed just before turning the lights off or immediately after turning them on. In the first case, the fishes need time to pick all the food off the bottom; in the latter case, it takes fishes ten or fifteen minutes to adjust to the light after having been in the dark for some time. By the time they have adjusted sufficiently to eat, the food will all have sunk to the bottom.

Signs of overfeeding are recognized as cotton puffs on the bottom and plants, as a gray slime over the bottom, as milky water, and as black gravel. As the particles of food are smaller than the granules of gravel, uneaten food works down into the gravel until it reaches the slate. Foods that are not eaten will lie at the bottom of the aquarium and rots, and as more and more waste food works down, the putrefaction spreads up toward the surface of the gravel.

People are frequently surprised when they stir up the gravel in their tanks and reveal what has been festering below an apparently clean surface. A light, occasional stirring of the gravel will help prevent this situation from developing. Best of all, prevent it by not overfeeding.