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This document is my opinions of good feeding. This is only a first draft, so if you have any comments, please e-mail me at asimma@geocities.com.
Many people think that dry foods are terrible for fish. I do not agree. I know it is possible to provide a better diet for aquatic life, but in most situations, dry food is usually the easiest(and cheapest) to use as a staple diet. Since this page is about both tropical and goldfish, I will discuss the two varieties separately.
Goldfish have very different dietary requirements from tropical fish. I will try to explain about the 'ideal' food by the process of elimination because if some of the reasons for of against the food do not apply to your fish, my advice would be invalid. In my experience, they will not do well on the diet of tropical flakes. So, the tropical flakes are out of the question as the best dry food for goldfish. The hard part is that all different goldfish like different foods and so no one food fits all of them. So, in the remainder of this document, I will only tell you about what I think is best, and it should not be used as a primer, but as a guide.
The three most commonly available dry foods are: goldfish flakes, sinking/floating pellets and sticks. The flakes are great and nutritious foods, but if your goldfish are like mine, they do two things that make flakes invaluable. They eat a whole lot, and since the good flakes are expensive, it becomes a problem, and they also do not usually feed from the top. So, most of the time, I do not use flakes. The same goes for floating pellets, since my goldfish cannot eat them. Sinking pellets are a different story. They are very close to food sticks, so I will discuss them together. They are both good foods, but unfortunately, both are very dry. They have to be soaked in water for a while in order for the goldfish to eat them, because otherwise the fish will float bellies up for a while. They will do it, since all the air inside them will make them float. It is very ugly and also unhealthy for the fish. Even with soaked pellets/sticks the problem can develop. However, despite their problems, I use soaked sticks/pellets as a staple diet, since they seem better then other dry foods. Yet, there is a better food then that, and it is covered in the homemade food for goldfish section.
With tropical fish, the problem is both simpler and more complex. Most of the better foods are good for tropical; just make sure that they are for tropical fish. However, since there is many more verities of tropical fish then goldfish, they all have different feeding requirements and I will not discuss food for specific fish. For most fish, either a regular flake food of a flake food made for them is OK as a staple diet. However, fish need some other things from time to time and I they will discuss them in the remainder of this whole document.
All fish need some sort of supplement to their diet. One of the several supplements available are the frozen or freeze dried foods. Most live foods are available as frozen and /or freeze dried foods. The usually available frozen foods include daphnia, brine shrimp and tubifex worms. They are all good supplements, but brine shrimp busts its shell after freezing, and its good stuff spills out into the water, so it is not as good as some other frozen foods. Frozen/Freeze dried foods are a good, safe replacement for live foods, since they do not carry any enemies with them. However, they do not move, and also probably are not as good as live foods for fish.
Some of the best foods available for fish can be homemade. Both goldfish and tropical fish love it.
There are many good homemade foods for goldfish, and most of them are suitable as a staple diet. I will not go into detail telling you how to make them because the food section of the Goldfish Mailing List web pages does it well enough. I tried a few of them and my fish loved them all. My favorites were the goldfish pancakes. My fish also like the gelatin foods. You should also try recipes 2 and 3 of the gelatin foods. I did not try anything else, but I am sure the rest is great food too. You may find that your goldfish will eat things from your kitchen like lettuce, peas, etc. You should boil the lettuce and then feed it to your fish. With the peas, it is a good idea to cook them until they are soft, and then smash them with your fingers.
With tropical fish, there is not so many verities of homemade foods. In most cases, the most complex homemade food is some algae cultured in a different tank (one may consider it a live food too). So, there is not too much to talk about in this section. With vegetarian fish you can try the peas, but I am not sure it will work. Even though I promised not to go into a discussion of food for different types of fish, I have to say that zucchini makes a great food for plecos. Chop it up in rings, and boil it, and after you weigh it down to the bottom, your pleco should love it. Just be sure you know that he will not eat algae until he gets hungry, but at least he will be happy. Other then that, there probably is not many homemade foods for tropical fish. If you have any suggestions for one, mail me.
Now here is a good topic. I will not go into a discussion of the obtaining or culturing different live foods since the FAQ covers it pretty well. In the remainder of this section, I will tell you about my opinions of different live foods.
Brine shrimp is both good and bad food because it lives in salt water. It is good because when it hatches, even if it carries a disease, it is not dangerous, since the salt water diseases can not live in fresh water. However, brine shrimp can not survive in fresh water either, and so they have to be eaten rather fast, or they will die and fowl the water. Daphnia is a freshwater relative of brine shrimp. It can live in an aquarium, and can be cultured, but unlike brine shrimp, they do not have eggs that can be hatched after being dry for a long time. Daphnia can also carry diseases and enemies, so only used cultured daphnia or some obtained from a reliable source.
The worm category includes blood worms, tubifex, and earthworms and several others. They are OK food, but tubifex can carry lots of diseases. So, if you feed tubifex, you should switch to blood worms, since they are much less prone to carry diseases. Earthworms are great food if your fish are big enough to eat them. White worms and microworms are good food, but are small and only good for tiny fish. Again, as all live foods, the worms can carry diseases, so beware.
About the best live food there is. Almost all fish love live fish, and there are live fish to fit any size of fish. The small types of fish love baby guppies and swordtails, bigger fish eat grown feeder guppies and even bigger fish eat goldfish. They are about the best live food, since they move fast, giving the fishes some exercise. They are also very nutritious, and quite easy to obtain. In addition, they all can be kept easily in crowded conditions. Overall, I think that they are the best live food available. I keep swordtails as pet fish, but when too many give birth (it happens all the time), I feed the babies to the rest of my fish, who seem to love them.
Egg yolk is a wonderful fish food for small baby fish. To feed it do the following:
| Hardboil an egg. Take a little piece of the yolk(maybe 1/20), and do whatever you want with the rest( I suggest eating it) Take the yold and pit it into a piece of cloth about 4in by 4in(for all normal metric people it is 10cm by 10cm). Put the yolk in the middle and fold it into a "bag". Then screw the end of the bag so a bit of the yolk goes through the fabric and dip it in the tank with the fry. Then put the rest into the fridge for the next time, but be sure to replace the yolk in a few days so it does not spoil. |
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