Fish food

[Kelly]

I plan on a Betta, some danios a cory and nerite snails in a 20 gal.  I am overwhelmed by the variety of fish foods.  It appears that fish love live food. Can you feed them just live food?  If so what is a good daily feeding schedule?

[Daniel]

Turns out fish do pretty well on just live food. But it can quite a commitment on your part.

Raising live food is its own hobby, but fun. Buying live food is convenient but expensive.

Depending on your location, collecting wild foods can be seasonal. Depending on the size of wallet buying live foods can be painful. I buy live blackworms, and I raise mosquito larva, baby brine shrimp (BBS), Daphnia and algae.

I start a new batch of baby brine shrimp every 12 hours so that I have baby shrimp in the morning and evening.

I collect Daphnia in the afternoon and feed immediately.

I feed blackworms and mosquito larva throughout the day.

Algae grows in my aquaria and is grazed upon as needed.

I also grow scuds (amphipods), seed shrimp, and green water but this only forms an incidental part of my fishes diet.

Baby brine shrimp is a silver bullet and is the only live food most aquarist will ever raise. Why?

• Relatively inexpensive in both time and money
• Convenient - can be stored and used only when needed
• Widely available - Aquarium Co-Op and almost every local fish store carries it
• Universally accepted by fish - Fish up to about 3 inches in length eat BBS greedily

Fish need what we need ourselves in a diet. Protein, fats, fiber, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. The way to achieve this is through a varied diet.

Find out what your local fish store carries, and consider raising baby brine shrimp, and you will have happy fish.

 

 

[Kelly]

Thanks for your input.  A lot to think about.  Very knowledgeable. 

[Cory]

The other thing I'd point out, over time fish can become dependant on live foods. This becomes a problem if you ever want to travel and have someone feed for you as they are less likely to do live food feeding tasks. Also if there is a disruption in supply it's a problem as well. For this I always recommend having them used to eating frozen and dry foods as well. 

[Kelly]

thanks Cory.  I rely heavily on your advise.   I guess I am still a little confused about a daily feeding schedule.  Dry food everyday? Live food every week and how many times a day?

As you probably know I am new to aquarium life and also to your forum.  I guess I messed up when I ask for a recommendation on buying fish on line, for which I humbly apologize for.  I also feel bad about the person who responded. Got him into trouble too.  

I am so happy to have this forum and will do my very best to watch what I post in the future.

[Struggle]

We feed a variety of dry food in the AM and either frozen or live for the evening feeding. There’s really no rhyme or reason to the frozen/live feeding, it mainly depends on if I hatched out baby brine shrimp. Once or twice a month some of our fish will get live scuds or live black worms as well. A lot of people feed once a day and it works well for them as well.