Food for humans that can apply for fish

[Auren]

Captian Hook: that page is great, I think i can take many options from there and add a more varied inexpensive diet to my fishes!

the only problem with meats (and some breads), besides the fat content, is often sliced meats (ham, turkey, bologna, etc) have preservatives, chemicals or even flavors in them....unless otherwise marked i suppose.

just make sure to check what the product contains before you feed it to your fish (ingreadients for fish foods are often treated and whatnot before being used)

Thanks for the advise, I did not think of the fat content of bread, but now that you mention it, I will look on the ingredients I think low fat black bread could be a good option.

 

[Auren]

Yeah I wanted to know about this. What I wanted to know is when feeding meat/seafood or fish, should it be cooked or raw. I was thinking things like prawns and chicken?

I think that meats that contain to much fat should be given on a very rare occasional basis, yet I sometimes feed my Arowana with thin slices of pure chicken with no fat.

 

[roliva]

Just be careful Cat,
Some fish can not handle high protein foods (digestive track being too long or too short, I forget which one) such as meat.

 

[chunksofpoooo]

i would stick with natural meats, if your going to feed them anything. Freshwater fish can be fed small crickets, flies, little things. Unless you own a piranha, or something similar, your fish wouldnt ever really eat cow anyways. Even if you do own a piranha, they mostly eat fish in the wild anyways. Marine fish you might have to improvize a bit, maybe a small amount of raw fish, squid, or octopus.

Feeding fish things like beef, chicken and similar meats is a little iffy, if your a purist i suppose, simply because fish wouldnt ever run into those meats as a food source, so their digestive tract might not be equipped to handle it correctly (or at all). Occasionally should really pose no problem, but i wouldnt make a habit of it.

 

[Ngaio]

I can see why one would feed some types of fish vegetables (goldfish benefit from a few peas now and then) and feed seafood/fish mush to meateaters but I don't see the point of feeding fish something like bread and coldcuts. It certainly would not be part of their normal diet in the wild. Lots of freshwater fish get their protein from things like insect larva which can be purchased frozen or dried - why expirement with items they would not naturally eat?

 

[cgrabe]

...why expirement with items they would not naturally eat?

Because there might be better things available for them. Humans never encounter meat loaf naturally, but it sure is good. Same deal with Centrum multivitamins, though good in a whole other way. Natural life is rough. Why not try to give our pets benefits they wouldn't otherwise have?

 

[Ngaio]

It might make life better for them, or it might be very bad for them; that's why I would not experiment on my pets. They have evolved to eat certain things and others might not be so great for them. My dog likes chocolate but he almost put himself in a coma one Valentine's Day by eating a whole candy bar while my back was turned. And too much meat loaf would not do my cholesterol levels any good at all! Just because an animal will eat certain things does not mean that it's the ideal food for them.

 

[cgrabe]

I agree that we shouldn't experiment blindly, but we know a good bit about what nutrition particular animals need. There is a lot of room to safely experiment to find a variety of foods that gives them the types of nutrition we know they need and makes them happy. I dare say feeding a fish a steady diet of a single type of flake food for its entire lifespan could be more harmful than occassionally feeding it something it doesn't like as part of a varied diet. We just have to consider why we're going to offer a fish a particular food before experimenting with it.

 

[125gJoe]

.... ...
.... Traces are traces- sure. But in a closed environment like an aquarium they can build up fairly rapidly.

Maybe I'm being 'over-cautious', but I only feed "aquarium fish food," whether it's frozen, flake or granules, I won't risk it...

Even with so called "fresh" seafoods, some sellers actually use small amounts of bleach to keep the seafood looking "fresh" for longer periods of time..

Here's a couple pics of our Discus feeding on one of their favorite foods - Tetra Color Bits..

 

[reiverix]

Those are really healthy looking discus. Almost makes me want to use my new 75g for a few. But no, I have other plans.