I want to make sure I am feeding a 'balanced' diet to my fish. Right now I feed them mainly Spirulina flakes and discs. Once in a while I give them frozen bloodworms/brine shrimp and a piece of zucchini.
Are there other things I should consider for a proper diet? I heard that I should be giving vitamins? I also hear some people use garlic. Now I'm not sure if that was a treatment or a food supplement. Just wondering what a balanced diet should consist of.
Platies, cories, harlequins, rams and bushynose are my current dinner guests but I'm still looking to add some interesting characters down the road.
you're likely to get some tremendously different answers on this one. what I've always been told is that if you're feeding them right, they don't need vitamins anyway. food quality is definitely another heated subject. I've seen many people say how freezedried foods are trash but I've fed tanks in the past purely on freezedried foods and had no problems and I don't see how they can claim the nutritional values on the container if they were bad so I don't believe that hype. I go on how well my fish look as far as color, size and abnormalities. frozen and live foods are definitely a more relished meal than crusty flakes but who knows how much better they are at nutrition. the closer to the natural food sources as you can get, the better but this can be tough since many of the natural foods are impossible to get and the ones you can, who knows if those foods are packed full of nutrients like they should be. I keep grindal worms, microworms, vinegar eels and brine shrimp live in my fish room but even those are only as nutritional as the foods you feed them. You have quite a varied group of fish so feeding them all the right foods poses an even greater challenge. My cories get omega-one shrimp pellets and any scraps the other tank inhabitants miss on the way down (which in some tanks is nothing). I've also had some cories eat tubifex worms from the top of the water on occasion. my platies and harlequins get a mixture of live baby brine shrimp, flakes, freezedried bloodworms, tubifex worms and brine-shrimp and they usually pick on the shrimp pellets and algae wafers left for the bottomfeeders. I've never been lucky enough to keep rams alive over a few weeks so I'm not able to give you an accurate description of what they might like. I fed the ones I have had tetra-cichlid small pellets and they seemed to like flakes as well. the bushynose will clean all the brown algae it can find but mine doesn't seem to like the green algae. I give him algae wafers occasionally and some fresh zucchini slices which he loves. He'll float around with a slice of zucchini for hours in the tank current until there's not much left of the flesh. you are right on with the variation. I really doubt a single food can keep the fish in a real healthy state but some fish you can't help it with what's available. when spring hits, I'm going to attempt to raise mosquito larvae (which shouldn't be too tough given the number of these blood suckers around) and these will beome my main food for my medium sized fish like barbs and rainbows. Your fish might enjoy some of these as well. Just be sure to harvest any larvae before they hatch. If there are too many to feed, just freeze them and use them at a later date. I'm hoping to get enough to feed through next winter. Might as well take advantage of what mother nature provides! Kyle
A circle would be fine. They'll nibble on it. You can drop it in during the evening time and take it out in the morning. That way your pleco can get some comfortably while the lights are out.
