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Food variety - how much is too much?


Fishdude
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Wanted to get a discussion question out here about what you're feeding your fish and why. Do you go for variety? Simplicity? Higher quality? 

I recently got Repashy Community with an ACO order to try it with my platys, tetras and cories (and my growing mystery snail population, but they'll eat anything). I made the food and was surprised they didn't all jump on it the first time I added it, but they've since decided it's good food. Prior to that I've rotated between flake/dried foods, frozen blood worms, frozen brine, frozen greens, and for my bottom feeders some good disc foods. Way more variety than I had intended when I started in the hobby!

So what foods do you all prefer and how often do you rotate through them?

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I think quality comes first. I can get a lot black worms so that gets fed daily. Same with the baby brine shrimp. But that is fat heavy so far, so then I alternate with what ever dry foods I have on hand. This always includes Tetra Color granules, and also a couple of Hikari products.

I can't get enough mosquito larva and Daphnia, but I feed all that I can collect on these.

But then about every 4th day or so, I don't feed anything. This is not part of a well thought out plan, I am just not a good fishkeeper sometimes. Only exception is fry. It is important for them to never miss a feeding when they are small.

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I feed twice a day. I have 1 pkg of frozen food at a time (varies), and also have freeze dried brine shrimp and bloodworms, regular flake, spirulina flake, pellet (betta, micro, and for all, Bug Bites), Easy Fry, and live BBS. I rotate mostly randomly except for Sunday, which is spirulina only day. Other days I feed one meal of flake or pellet and one meal of live, frozen or freeze dried. I really want to try the grown live brine shrimp that my LFS sells, but that would be a special treat because I'm sure they're expensive. 

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Wow I dont quite have that much variety compared to the above.

I feed NLS Community Sinking Pellet to my Community Tank almost every day (once a day). Frozen Blood worms on fridays.

For my betta tank I feed Hikari Betta Bio Gold through out the week and then frozen blood worms on Friday as well as Fluval Bug Bites on Monday.

I wanna try some repashy soon. Thinking the Community Plus Variety.

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9 minutes ago, James Black said:

Wow I dont quite have that much variety compared to the above.

I feed NLS Community Sinking Pellet to my Community Tank almost every day (once a day). Frozen Blood worms on fridays.

For my betta tank I feed Hikari Betta Bio Gold through out the week and then frozen blood worms on Friday as well as Fluval Bug Bites on Monday.

I wanna try some repashy soon. Thinking the Community Plus Variety.

Yeah that's the repashy I bought. It's really easy to make, it smells kinda bad, and for some reason it took my fish awhile to warm up to it. Everyone eats it now though. I think I'm going to need to freeze it (and you may want to do that as well).

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For me it depends.  Some things get whatever flakes are on hand and they're great on that - think Endler's and little fish like that.  For the mbuna tank I am putting together I have more extensive plans.  I'm sort of making my own Repashy.  I want them on a nearly vegan diet, and to avoid krill at all costs.  For my forthcoming Tangs, I'll be doing frozen of various stuff and some high quality pellets.  For them I'd like to do some live stuff too, but I just don't have a great spot or system of that right now.

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I feed a lot of live foods, Grindle worms,Black worms, Live adult brine shrimp, Baby brine shrimp,Daphnia,and fruit flies. I also feed frozen, brine shrimp and blood worms. Last but not least I feed high quality dry foods, Bug Bites (small,medium & Pleco Formula),Exteme Krill flakes, Repashy community and I just started trying Vibra Bites. My main aquarium is a 125 with mostly smaller types of schooling fish such as rummy nose tetras,cardinals,dwarf pencils, three line pencils, ember tetras, glow lights etc. plus Cory catfish, ottos, dwarf chain loaches and hill stream loaches 

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2 minutes ago, Dkshadowwolf said:

I feed a lot of live foods, Grindle worms,Black worms, Live adult brine shrimp, Baby brine shrimp,Daphnia,and fruit flies. I also feed frozen, brine shrimp and blood worms. Last but not least I feed high quality dry foods, Bug Bites (small,medium & Pleco Formula),Exteme Krill flakes, Repashy community and I just started trying Vibra Bites. My main aquarium is a 125 with mostly smaller types of schooling fish such as rummy nose tetras,cardinals,dwarf pencils, three line pencils, ember tetras, glow lights etc. plus Cory catfish, ottos, dwarf chain loaches and hill stream loaches 

A. where does one find so many live foods?

B. what kind of corydoras?

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You can get grindal worm cultures (smaller version of white worms which can tolerate higher temps), fruit fly cultures and daphina cultures from Aqua bid. All these  cultures are easy to maintain. My local fish store offers both black worms (pretty common here in Northern California) and live adult brine(not common it is the only shop I now that offers it in my area). My corries are Sterbi and Aldofi.

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I feed quality crushed flake to all my tanks, sinking shrimp pellets to my tank with corys and sometimes the shrimp tank, blanched frozen veggies to the shrimp and snail tank, microworms for my natives tank for the pygmy sunfish and to my paracyprichromis tank, bbs to my paracyprichromis tank, and the vibra bites fake bloodworms for my apistos, cardinal tetras, and julidochromis. I'd like to feed more live foods, but find it to take too much of a setup or too time consuming. I tried white worms but that didn't work well for me. I just started bbs and will probably use that for more tanks now that the paracyprichromis are eating crushed flake as well. I also need more microworm cultures going at once. They're easy I just need to start them.

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11 hours ago, ererer said:

I feed quality crushed flake to all my tanks, sinking shrimp pellets to my tank with corys and sometimes the shrimp tank, blanched frozen veggies to the shrimp and snail tank, microworms for my natives tank for the pygmy sunfish and to my paracyprichromis tank, bbs to my paracyprichromis tank, and the vibra bites fake bloodworms for my apistos, cardinal tetras, and julidochromis. I'd like to feed more live foods, but find it to take too much of a setup or too time consuming. I tried white worms but that didn't work well for me. I just started bbs and will probably use that for more tanks now that the paracyprichromis are eating crushed flake as well. I also need more microworm cultures going at once. They're easy I just need to start them.

I find that grindal worms are much easier to culture than white worms and their size are great for tetras and corries.

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I mostly feed variety for 3 reasons. I have different fishes that prefer different kind of diets (angels prefer more protein and pleco i have prefer greens the clowns - well they are moody in both direction) also in hope of having a more balance diet - different process foods have different balance of nutrition by mixing it up i hope to cover the full spectrum with hope the fishes will pick and choose (as they do in the wild) what they are missing from their diet. For the longest time i stopped feeding flakes - a rather messy food but to be honest my tetra and angels prefer flakes above all else (well the tetra flakes - they won't touch omega-one flakes). The one thing i do not feed them is live food - i'm sham'ed to say live food is one step of too much effort. I will hatch bbs for frys i want to raise but that is my limit on live foods. One concern i have is those foods that tend to be highly regarded (northfin, omega-one and nls) my fishes seem to not like to much and they seem to prefer the junk food like tetra and warden (well those that contain more filler ingrediants). They do love fluval bug bites which seem to have very little filler so there is that. 

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Anyway i try to 'turn' off certain foods for periods of time to get the fishes to eat different combination of nutrition. Don't know if it is necessary or beneficial but i do it anyway - if nothing else when they really hate something they will splash me and i sort of get the message.

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With white worms, I can keep mine in my basement, so temperature isn't an issue. Though I keep my fish upstairs in my bedroom, so going downstairs and coming back up was also impractical. I was keeping mine in a damp soil mixture, and found that they weren't reproducing very fast so that I couldn't feed much or often, and it was time consuming and messy to pick them out of the soil one by one. Also, I had to watch and try to feed individual fish since I didn't have many worms to make sure that everyone was eating, with the picky ones that only eat live foods, like pygmy sunfish. It was just impractical for me. I gave up on them when the culture became infested with tiny red mites (they may have come in on the soil, that was my fault).

I've heard about people using scouring pads instead of soil as a culture media. I had grindal worms shipped to me this way but they didn't ship well the one or two times I tried so I didn't end up getting to try it.

@Dkshadowwolf and @Daniel, do you have suggestions on easier ways to keep white worms or grindals? With microworms, I just make a new culture every two months, sprinkle yeast on the culture every so often, and use my finger to wipe some worms off the top or side of the container. Very easy. If white worms or grindals could be this easy, I would definitely add them to the mix.

I'd do blackworms, but I'm not interested in setting up another aquarium just to culture them. Unless there's also an easier way with them?

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As for blackworms, I just buy them every other week or so for about $40 a pound. It is expensive, but I would rather have the blackworms than the $40.

White worms are like water sprite or Vallisneria. They can take off, or sit there and do nothing. I kept mine in potting soil in Tupperware containers that I kept in a mini-frige and fed them bread with brewers yeast and yogurt. I think they actually ate bacteria that grew on the bread, etc. Eventually the culture crashes so you have to keep making new cultures. My time is worth something and it is easier just to buy blackworms.

I would like to hear more about @Dkshadowwolf culture methods for grindal worms. The fact that they can tolerate higher temperatures is very appealing to me.

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@Daniel @ererer

Here is my “system “ for culturing grindal worms.

I got my starter culture from aqua bid. Grindal worms are not always available like white worms, but they do show up every now and then. I find them much easier to culture as they are not susceptible to heat like white worms and you only need to sub culture every 2 to 3 months. I use eco earth as my substrate ( easily available at most petco or petsmarts) ,and disposable Tupperware (which I put in the dishwasher and reuse) I use a nail to punch holes in the top. I also lay a plastic mesh on top of the eco earth and use dry cat food to feed the grindal worms. (I spray the cat food with water to soften it up). Just drop one eco earth block in 5 gallon bucket cover with water and let it sit and soak up the water. Just squeeze out the excess water and you will get a peat moss like substrate. One block will last you for a long time. I just put the excess in a large zip lock bag or large Tupperware container and keep sealed until I set up a new culture. See attached for a look at the supplies and set-up. 

Hope this helps

 

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