Favorite food for community fish

[sairving]

Louie the Betta died over the weekend. He had a large tumor. Looking at my rather empty tank, I decided to head over to my lfs after work yesterday. I came home with white clouds and more pygmy corys. 

I have bug bites and several brands of Betta pellets. Since I got back into the hobby, I've kept bettas. I can wax poetic about Betta pellets lol. I ended up coming home with community flakes for the white clouds and sinking wafers. 

The interesting thing about the flakes is they're the house brand for my LFS. My guess is that the food is made to their specifications? I didn't ask, they were pretty busy. 

What is everyone's favorite foods for community tanks? 

[TOtrees]

I've been really happy with the Xtreme nano community pellets. I also like bug bites community. 

I'm running around 15 tanks right now so I keep a variety of foods on hand, and use many different ones at a time. I've found that more expensive foods are usually worth it because you can use less of them. 

I prefer foods that are smaller than what most folks feed, ie smaller pellet/particle size. I only feed flake food to surface feeding fish (guppies, killis, furcata rainbows, rice fish, etc). 

I like golden pearls, 200-300 microns. These are great for everything up to guppy size. 

With pellets, I almost always introduce the food below the surface of the water (eg add a 2 finger pinch below the water line, sprinkle/spread it around), since I find a lot of wastage when I just drop food on top (eg cories, shellies, plecos, shrimps). 

I've recently made an effort to find/use foods that have wheat or starch ingredients lower down in the ingredients listing. 

I like the bug bites large cichlid pellets too, even for nano communties. These float on the surface for a while, but are too big for any of my small fish to even think about getting into their mouths. They sink after 5-10 mins. So while they're on the surface, the small fish pick at them, and when the sink, the cories etc get their time. 

So for your bettas, I'd go with the smallest pellet you can find, preferably that still floats. I think you'd also have good success with the coop fry food bottle. Good ingredients, tiny particle size, mostly floating. 

[sairving]

I actually have to find someone locally who may want my Betta food. For Bettas, I really like bug bites, Northfin and NLS. I also have a blackworm pellet that went over well. The only food my Betta was not enthusiastic about was the shrimp patties. 

My pygmy corys seem to be confused by the sinking wafers lol. The white clouds ate the LFS branded flakes. I will get another prepared food for them and replace the frozen brine shrimp with baby brine shrimp. 

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

Any flake food which the fish ❤️works for me.

Bonus: They sing for their supper😏

[Guppysnail]

For my Pygmy Cory I like northfin fry starter, bbs, grindal worms and I recently explored Kens foods at the recommendation of several breeder folks from my fish club the 00 growth is perfect for the Pygmy and they go crazy. Also they liked the meat wafers. Others they enjoy are easy fry, Xtreme bottom wafers and first bites. The Kens 00  is a great size for most nano fish but just a touch large for fry. 

[sairving]

@Guppysnail I'll have to try a few of those for the pygmy corys. They are nibbling at the hikari wafers but don't seem thrilled about them. 

[mynameisnobody]

As a general standard community flake, I feed the majority of my aquariums Xtreme Krill Flakes. Everyone devours it and they don’t seem to get as excited about any other food. I also feed bug bites and Sera O nip tabs (strictly for sentimental purposes because these new ones definitely don’t do what the old ones did). 
And of course, BBS…

[AllFishNoBrakes]

My 3 main staples for dry foods are Xtreme Krill Flake (I mix in some spirulina and essentially make my own community crave), Xtreme nano, and Hikari Vibra Bites. Then I do live and frozen foods too. 

Edited October 24, 2022 by AllFishNoBrakes

[Nyssa]

My fish really seem to love the Xtreme Community Crave and the Krill Flakes, they go nuts over them 😊 sometimes I'll switch it up with some Fluval Bug Bite flakes as well so they have some variety.

[PineSong]

I have way too many containers of fish food, so my new goal is to buy smaller containers so that they get used up before they age out.

My otocinclus are the only fish I use fish-specific food for: they like Repashy Soilent Green added directly to the tank, and produce.

Everyone else (livebearers, neon tetras, angel fish, white clouds) are super into Extreme Krill flakes, Vibrabites, Extreme Spirulina flakes, Bug Bites Tropical Formula. My white clouds never ever come to the top of the water column so if I am feeding something that mostly floats/gets gobbled up by the livebearers and angel up at the top, I drop in some crushed Vibrabites, Bug Bites or crushed Tetra Color Granules for them because those sink down to where the midlevel white clouds can get some.

I also feed frozen BBS and frozen brine shrimp+spirulina, dried blood worms, daphnia, brine shrimp, nori seaweed, and Repashy Community Plus.  

If I was going to be limited to two foods for my community (non-otocinclus) I would go with Extreme Krill flakes as my flake and Bug Bites as my pellet/granule. 

 

[Flumpweesel]

I bet your white clouds will eat the Betta pellets.

And if you crush then do they sink so will the corys.

I crush hikari cichlid gold for everyone and I have some sinking pellets (hikari and king British) for the larger corys. The pgymys in my tank tend to focus on the crushed food. I've just run out of tetra crisps that my mollies love. Darn and bug bites there is a big food shop looming.

I randomly feed BBS and frozen blood worm 

[Mitch_ScruffyCityAquatics]

I love Xtreme’s Community blend flake food, and so do the fish. It’s a feeding frenzy. I also feed the Xtreme Nano. Same response. For my Cories I like to use Xtreme’s Scrapers. Other than the occasional BBS and frozen foods Xtreme is my go too. 

[sairving]

On 10/25/2022 at 2:40 AM, Flumpweesel said:

I bet your white clouds will eat the Betta pellets.

And if you crush then do they sink so will the corys.

I crush hikari cichlid gold for everyone and I have some sinking pellets (hikari and king British) for the larger corys. The pgymys in my tank tend to focus on the crushed food. I've just run out of tetra crisps that my mollies love. Darn and bug bites there is a big food shop looming.

I randomly feed BBS and frozen blood worm 

The pygmy Cory that was with my beta does eat beta pellets. I made sure some were crushed up and would sink. I need to pick up some new frozen food soon.

On 10/25/2022 at 2:40 AM, Flumpweesel said:

I bet your white clouds will eat the Betta pellets.

And if you crush then do they sink so will the corys.

I crush hikari cichlid gold for everyone and I have some sinking pellets (hikari and king British) for the larger corys. The pgymys in my tank tend to focus on the crushed food. I've just run out of tetra crisps that my mollies love. Darn and bug bites there is a big food shop looming.

I randomly feed BBS and frozen blood worm 

The pygmy Cory that was with my beta did eat beta pellets. I made sure some were crushed up and would sink.

On 10/25/2022 at 2:40 AM, Flumpweesel said:

I bet your white clouds will eat the Betta pellets.

And if you crush then do they sink so will the corys.

I crush hikari cichlid gold for everyone and I have some sinking pellets (hikari and king British) for the larger corys. The pgymys in my tank tend to focus on the crushed food. I've just run out of tetra crisps that my mollies love. Darn and bug bites there is a big food shop looming.

I randomly feed BBS and frozen blood worm 

The pygmy Cory that was with my beta did eat beta pellets. I made sure some were crushed up and would sink.