Proper diet for CA cichlids?

The main thing to remember when trying to define a proper diet for your fish is diversity!! Its not so much the single best thing, but its a combination of proper foods that will provide your fish with optimum health. Most of the south/central American cichlids are carnivores or piscivores, so a diet that mimics that is always best. Its not a good idea to provide your fish with captive raised feeders, as they are kept in much less the ideal conditions, and often riddled with infections and parasites themselves. There are, however, a load of alternatives to feeders. Here are some examples of foods you can use to diversify your fishs' diets:

Earth worms

Fresh or frozen fish from your grocier

Meal worms(no, they will not eats your fishs' stomachs!!)
Frozen blood worms

Mysis Shrimp

Krill(frozen preferd...fish like it much better then freez dried)

Frozen silversides(found at your LFS mainly used for marine fish, but well suited for cihclids)

Crayfish(one of my personal favorites....also found at most good LFS for use as feeders)

Ghost shrimp

Just to name a few. As for staples, there are a ton of foods out there you can use. Some are a bit better, some are a bit worse, but all adhear to the same basic standars. I do recomend staying away from flake foods for larger fish, as its fairly messy, and not very filling for them. I take a few differnt brands of pellets, and mix them together to suite my own needs. Some vegie pellets, some krill based pellets, some color enhancers, some fish meal based pellets ect.. Out of two daily feeding(for most my tanks anyway) one feeding is the pelleted foods, and the second is something else. I try to mix up the something else daily if I can.

HTH,
"J"

Good question. The reason I chose crayfish and ghost shrimp in place of feeders is something called the species barrier. Its the simple notion that the kind of sickness that a crayfish or shrimp would get will not effect a fish. Its the same reason you don't catch your dogs cold... There are some exceptions to this of course, but those are extreme cases...ie, BFE(mad cow).

The same concept goes for earth worms. I use night crawlers from my local bait shop, but I make sure the clean them well before feeding. I find it helpful to rip them in half and squeez the crap out and rinse them off before they go in the tank. Its just a precuation I take because bait shops often put things in the worm dirt to stave off mold or what have you, so its better safe then sorry. I've been doing it for years and haven't had any problems. The same basic concept goes for crayfish. Though a sick crayfish won't make your fish sick, it could have hitch-hikers on it....such as flukes and such. Just give a quick inspection to them to make sure nothing funny looking is there. If ever in doubt, don't feed it. Also, I cut the pincers off ....not so much for the fishs' safty, but almost all species of fish I've fed them to spit them out, so I have to take them out of the tank any way.


Hope this helps.

"J"

It really comes down to what kind of fish you feed. I have a few herbivore cichlids. I feed them mainly vege type of food. Then I have other omnivore cichlids...those I feed all kinds of food.

My fish main diets are shrimp, freeze dried plankton, spirulina pellets, hikari gold, frozen bloodworms...

Their special treats are crickets and earthworms...whenever available.

Herbivore cichlids get food like lettuce, peas (skinless), spinach, spirulina pellets....

I feed them once a day. On weekend, I feed them twice a day.

In addition to other suggestions, one staple I keep in my freezer is frozen prawns! I generally manage to save a few for my larger cichlids, just defrost them under warm water and tear into bits. Often tempts fish when other things are refused. Don't have arguements either about keeping 'fishy' foods in with family food. (Never yet served bloodworms on toast, but think my family worry this may happen).