discus foods

Hello...

It seems as though you have ventured off into the realm of keeping Discus. They are really great fish and I have kept several varities during my time in the hobby.

As far as feeding any type of frozen or un-prepared food to Discus I have had wonderful results feeding only pellets and flakes. Hikari makes a great Sinking Discus pellet that is intended to get pronounced color, also New Life Spectrum has a food dedicated to Discus. Rotating the currently avaliable prepared foods with the semi-occasional feeding of a frozen food should prove to be just fine.

To answer your question about re-freezing food I would not suggest that. Frozen foods lose many vital nutrients when they are thawed from a frozen state and to re-freeze them is going to lower thier nutritional value to the fish much more. Feeding frozen foods though once per week would be more than sufficient for your Discus. Possible using the pellets quoted above over the forzen foods which tend to get pricy may save you some money.

As for your skunk loach I don't typically recommend keeping any other fish with Discus, such as like you said you had the occasional tetra, although people I know have success with keeping a variety of fish with thier Discus. Would that cause lower activity levels in the tank? Likely not unless the loach was carrying a parasite and it has infected other members of the tank. Tetra makes an Anti Parasite flake that is colored green, I typically fed my Discus this flake once per week to good results.

To finish this off I would recommend research on Discus they are really amazing but not without thier challenges.

I have found Tetra Color Bits to be an excellent food. The 8 Discus I have really love the stuff! The food sinks slowly and I crush some of the Bits which seems to help the Rasboras in feedings. Even my SAE's love it!

Don't re-freeze fish foods. Frozen Bloodworks are about a necessity for Discus.. Once a week, 3 times, just don't overfeed the frozen foods. I even go as far as to thaw the Bloodworms on a clean paper towel as the excess liquids are not needed in the tanks water column. I even believe the some of the excess liquids can contribute to Cyanobacteria (very hard to get rid of..)....

Live California blackworms are great for growth. I feed these every evening.