What to feed aquarium fish?
The answers to this question are quite simple, but at the same time they are individual in nature - that is, they depend on the specific type of aquarium fish, on the volume of the aquarium and other nuances!
Answering the question - HOW TO FEED FISH? We can generally say that pets need to be fed in such a way that the abandoned food is eaten within 1-2 minutes. In covering this issue, it should be noted that it is better to underfeed fish than to overfeed. Do not feed the fish much or often. Make sure that you don’t get into a situation where you feed the fish, then your spouse, and then the children!
Moreover, starving fish is a diet that benefits the fish! Give your fish fasting days once a month - do not feed the fish for 2 days. By following these recommendations, you will get rid of the risk of your pets getting gastrointestinal diseases and only improve their well-being!
The second point that is worth highlighting on the issue is HOW TO FEED FISH! Food for fish should be balanced and varied, in addition, it should meet the individual needs of a particular type of fish swimming in your “oceanarium”. Often many people make a big mistake and feed the fish with one type of food (for example, dry)! Such a policy of keeping fish and such feeding leads over time to the question - HOW TO TREAT FISH? The food must be of high quality and varied. At the same time, no one says that fish need to be fed delicacies. But you can combine, for example, dry and frozen food, it’s not that expensive!
In addition, different fish prefer different foods; some, for example, really need plant foods! Taking into account such features, select the appropriate food and balance it.
WHEN TO FEED FISH? This question is also individual for a specific fish species. For example, most aquarium catfish are nocturnal, and therefore it is advisable to feed them in the dark.
But since most fish are diurnal, it is better to feed them during the day - in the morning or at lunch.
HOW MUCH TO FEED?
I feed mine once a day, in the morning. However, many recommend feeding aquarium fish 2 times a day. Actually, I don’t see anything wrong with this. The main thing is to follow the rule: the food should be eaten within 2-3 minutes.
WHAT FOOD SHOULD I FEED THE FISH?
A very important issue in food for aquarium fish is the issue of its quality. Undoubtedly? You can “get aquarium food” the old fashioned way - hunt in ponds or suffer with bloodworms. You can buy feed at poultry markets! However, no one will give you guarantees! Moreover, such food is dangerous for the health of your pets.
To protect yourself from problems, and your aquarium from infection, it is recommended to buy food only in branded pet stores in your city. In this case, you should look at the labeling and release date of the product.
Online pet stores have become very popular these days: resources that sell aquariums, aquarium equipment, fish food and other aquarium products. Without leaving your home, you can select and order the necessary products. In addition, prices in online stores are much lower than the retail price of the product.
WHAT TO FEED FISH?
We have the following types of fish food in our arsenal:
Dry: dried gammarus, brine shrimp, dawn, etc.
Freeze-dried food consisting of a mixture of ingredients.
Frozen food: bloodworms, brine shrimp, streptocephalus, daphnia, etc.
Live food: bloodworms, brine shrimp, grindal, etc.
A group of products that can be called “food from our table”: seafood (fish fillet, shrimp, lean beef - ox heart... lettuce, spinach, zucchini, zucchini, cucumber, etc.).
Agree, a magnificent arsenal! It is only important to use it correctly. All you need is to purchase food and create a diet schedule for the week, according to the individual preferences of the aquatic animals.
Do you know what the very first desire arises in a person who has just installed an aquarium at home and introduced his very first fish into it? I really want to feed them! Yes, yes, because, of course, the fish want to eat!
And besides, if the fish accept food, this means (according to the understanding of their owners, of course!) that they are comfortable in the aquarium and everything is done correctly. But we will not now touch on the correctness of such conclusions, since in this part of the Beginners Manifesto we will only talk about feeding fish.
Undoubtedly a good appetite in fish it is the first sign of their well-being. However, we have to disappoint our readers - with many serious diseases, it often happens that fish do not refuse food. However, we suggest immediately dismissing possible negative problems and focusing directly on food and feeding, initially assuming that all fish are absolutely healthy and want only one thing - to eat!
It would seem that the simplest process called “feeding aquarium fish” actually deserves the closest attention and certain skills, which we will discuss further. But first, we list four main questions that quite often lead newcomers to a dead end:
- What should you give?
- How should you give?
- How much should I give?
- When should you give?
Of course, you need to give food. But what, how, for how much and when - we will try to tell you about this in detail and clearly. In short, the optimal fish diet- one of the main conditions for the safe maintenance of the aquarium and its inhabitants.
Theoretically, fish eat anything that is edible. Some particularly desperate aquarists try to test this axiom on their own fish, giving them for lunch from ordinary bread to freshly cooked pilaf. But this can hardly be considered a reasonable action. Any food offered to fish should be intended only for them and only for them (you won’t feast on a worm yourself, will you?!).
The range of food preferences of aquarium inhabitants is truly huge: from microscopic crustaceans for small fish such as nenas to newborn mice or day-old chicks for huge arowanas or piranhas. It can also be various plants, fruits, algae, beans, and grains. It can also be various cooked porridges, curdled milk, bread, and confectionery.
You see how easy it is to feed your pets! However, do not rush to rejoice - feed aquarium fish should be done correctly, otherwise you will either feed them to death or turn your aquarium into a swamp with smelly, murky water.
Live food for aquarium fish
And yet – what should you give your fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
The best food is live! Fortunately, in Tashkent it is very easy to buy it at the pet market. Bloodworms, tubifex and some live crustaceans are what your fish’s daily menu may consist of. bloodworm– mosquito larvae, tubifex – worms. Both are mined in small rivers or sewers. Therefore, they can introduce various diseases into the aquarium, and sometimes simply poison all the fish. This is the main disadvantage of live food.
Their big advantage is that live food is natural for fish, they eat it with pleasure, contains a lot of useful substances and vitamins. What to do then? Disinfect! Bloodworms, moreover, after disinfection, can (and better!) be frozen.
Disinfection involves soaking a purchased portion of bloodworms or tubifex in a fairly strong solution of potassium permanganate or methylene blue for half an hour. Then the food should be thoroughly rinsed under running water, the bloodworms should be placed in a plastic bag in the form of a chocolate bar and sent to the freezer, and the tubifex should be placed in a flat container, pour very little water into it and send it all to the very bottom of the refrigerator ( tubifex should sit in the vessel for several days, and it must be washed under running water in the morning and evening).
Ice cream and other types of food for aquarium fish
It seems like this option isn't quite right for you? Then live and frozen food is no longer necessary, and more presentable products can be recommended to you. For predatory fish, this is, first of all, lean meat (beef), beef heart, sea fish fillet, bought in a store, ice cream bought there shrimps. Smaller and less toothy fish can be given porridge boiled in water, pieces of bread, low-fat cookies, omelet, scalded lettuce leaves and nettles.
A very good replacement for live or frozen food are various feed mixtures. Their basis can be minced meat, so-called “sea cocktails” (a mixture of frozen shrimp and shellfish), and porridge. We advise you to read and about feed mixture based on minced meat .
There are fish that need to be fed raw (or scalded) fruits and vegetables. They are happily eaten by catfish from the loricariid family ( ancistrus, brocade catfish, loricaria etc.), some other fish, as well as snails - ampullaries and coils. The only thing that needs to be done is to attach a small stone to pieces of vegetables or fruits using, for example, a fishing line, which will sink the food to the bottom of the aquarium and prevent it from floating up. Anything uneaten must be removed from the aquarium. We advise you to read about.
All fish can be fed with various imported granular, dry food, which are sold in huge quantities and variety at bazaars and pet stores. It is better, of course, to buy food from well-known companies, but they are more expensive than food supplied to us from Southeast Asia. These foods are multi-colored plates, peas, granules or tablets, which, as stated by their manufacturers, include: nutrients and vitamins. Well, all you have to do is believe in it and feed it to your pets.
But we want to warn you right away: you need to give all the food listed above to the fish very carefully, otherwise you can ruin all the living things in the aquarium. Therefore, we move on to the second question posed.
Feeding regimen for aquarium fish
First you need to understand one thing well - feeding fish is accompanied by a deliberate external influence on a closed biological system, which is any aquarium. More clearly, this means that when we give our fish food, we will definitely introduce either living organisms into the aquarium ( worms, larvae, crustaceans, ciliates, etc.), or various substances (highly water-soluble proteins of cereals and bread, dyes and preservatives of granulated feed, etc.). So, the main task of the aquarist is to reduce the amount of these external additives to a minimum.
Live food Before serving, the fish must be thoroughly rinsed under running water for at least a minute. Ice cream bloodworm it is necessary to defrost in a cup, rinse thoroughly from the blood in a tight net and only then give it to the fish. When giving porridge to the fish, it must also be thoroughly washed so that only grains remain (for example, semolina or pearl barley).
However, no matter how you wash any food, at least a small part of it will still dissolve in water - this is inevitable. Therefore, it is necessary to install in the aquarium filter pump, which would filter out various suspended matter and neutralize chemicals. But the filter may not help if there is an excess of food in the aquarium. And this very often happens among loving fish owners. It is for them that our third question is intended.
Amount of food for aquarium fish
The basic rule has been formulated a long time ago - feed should be given exactly as much as is completely eaten by the fish in three to five minutes. When you give food, it inevitably begins to fall to the bottom (with the exception of live crustaceans, which spread throughout the aquarium), and this is very bad.
If you introduce bloodworms or tubifex, then, having reached the bottom, they immediately burrow into the ground, beginning to contribute to the biobalance of the aquarium. However, there are fish that happily dig into the soil, literally picking out living worms from it. Therefore, if you have such fish, then having a very small part of live food in the ground is even useful.
But if you give food so that the entire bottom of the aquarium is covered with it, then this is not just bad, but catastrophic! This is especially true for frozen and dry food, cereals, meat, etc. Uneaten food, falling to the bottom and falling under soil stones, immediately begins to decompose, releasing substances harmful to fish into the water. The result of this is cloudy water with a foul odor, poisoning of fish and other aquatic organisms, and, finally, their possible death.
And yet many aquarists are tormented by the question - do the fish have enough food?, which they give them? It is difficult to calculate the amount of portions given. Well, for example, there is this option: for every 100 grams of fish weight you need to give 10 grams of food. But which of you will weigh the food and, especially, your fish?!
Therefore, there is another important rule for aquarists - it’s better underfeed the fish than to overfeed. Typically, fish in an aquarium are fed twice a day - morning and evening.
Food can be placed in special feeders, or slowly scatter it with your hand in the water (warning: if you have open wounds on your hand, this cannot be done!).
All fish should get food, at least one worm or piece. In this regard, feeders are not very good, since strong individuals usually hang around them all the time, not allowing weaker neighbors to eat.
For small schooling and young fish, it is highly advisable to increase the frequency of feeding to three to five times a day. It is very good to organize fasting days for your fish (only adults!) once a week or two, when food is not given at all.
Well, now we can move on to our last question.
What time of day to feed aquarium fish
In fact, the answer to this question is quite obvious: when it is convenient for you. For example, you leave for work in the morning and stay there until the evening. This means you can feed the fish in the morning, before leaving, and in the evening, after returning home. However, morning feeding is not so safe.
I remember several cases when fish were given food in the morning, their owner went to work, and in the evening, when he came home, he discovered that all the fish were dead. This can very well happen in overcrowded or small aquariums when the electricity in the house goes out for some reason in broad daylight.
As a result, the compressor or filter pump that saturates the water with oxygen stops working. And then the fish that have eaten begin to choke, so much so that they can die from suffocation. Therefore, morning feeding of fish should be thought out from the point of view of possible force majeure circumstances.
In general, adult fish, especially predatory, you can limit the supply of feed to one time - either in the morning or in the late afternoon. It is also better not to feed the fish late in the evening, since they must have time to digest and assimilate the food they eat. However, there are exceptions here too.
Aquariums often contain not only daytime, but also nocturnal fish (for example, various catfish). These fish become active in the dark, so they need to be given food before turning off the lights in the aquarium.
And finally, they are available for sale automatic feeders, which greatly simplify the process of feeding fish in the absence of their owners. Some models allow you to program feedings several days in advance. However, here everything depends on the design of the feeder - if it is powered by the mains, then if the voltage in the socket is lost, the set feeding program will be reset, and no food will be given to the fish.
You started the aquarium, planted the plants, chose the fish, but now a very pressing question arises: what and how should you feed these fish? - let's figure it out.
Conventionally, all fish can be classified into three groups:
- Predators - their favorite food - are live, but they can also be accustomed to artificial fish substitutes without difficulty. Such pets have a large stomach, and they often swallow their prey whole;
- Herbivores - they have a miniature stomach, but a long intestine; they feed mainly on algae and plants, but they will not refuse small live food;
- Omnivores are the majority of aquarium fish, and they can be given various types of food.
You need to choose food depending on:
- taste preferences of fish, it would not hurt to find out how they feed: whether they pick up food from the bottom or grab it from the surface;
- what size food they can swallow: fish are unlikely to be happy with a delicacy that is twice the diameter of their mouth;
- Your financial capabilities: it is better to buy good live food than a cheap artificial substitute;
- The age of the fish, since juveniles and adults eat different types of food.
The basic principle of feeding aquarium fish: less is better than more. Obesity and diseases of internal organs as a result of overfeeding will be much more difficult to cope with, and it’s unlikely that anyone will want to siphon the soil every day due to the large accumulation of food debris.
How often should you feed your fish?
Adults need to be fed 1-2 times a day at the same time (in the evening - 2-3 hours before bedtime). Fry are fed more often - 4-5 times a day, the daily portion should be approximately equal to the weight of the fry. The amount of food is determined by “trial and error”; give as much food as the fish eat in 5-10 minutes; the remaining food will simply settle to the bottom (bottom fish are an exception; they are fed first, and only then food is added to other species).
It is necessary to arrange a fasting day every 7-10 days: since fish do not expend energy to maintain body temperature, they can easily starve for a couple of days. Sick fish are fed less frequently because many fish lose their appetite. Individuals preparing for spawning are fed more often and more abundantly.
What to feed aquarium fish?
If we talk about nutrients, then 50% of the feed should be proteins, less fat and carbohydrates. The food must also contain pigments, vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. Bottom fish also need sand and driftwood - roughage improves digestion.
Live food.Large predatory fish are often fed with smaller individuals - guppies, goldfish, and so on, but you can also easily accustom your pets to meat and insects. Aquarium fish are given crickets, fruit flies, small crustaceans (Cyclops, Daphnia, Artemia, Gamarus), bloodworms, tubifex, enchytraea, and earthworms. Frozen live food has become very popular: owners do not have to suffer and breed unattractive worms or flies. Externally, this food looks like cubes or briquettes that easily disintegrate under running water; vitamins and nutrients are better preserved in such food. Tetra, San Francisco BloodWorms, Wardley and other companies specialize in the production of such foods.
Artificial feed. They often include several products; artificial foods come in the form of flakes, granules, tablets, and pastes. It is worth remembering that such food must be stored in a sealed container in a cool and dry place, as it quickly deteriorates. If you don't have a lot of fish, you shouldn't buy large packages - the food will spoil quickly. Try to choose well-known manufacturers; the packaging should be sealed, with a clearly marked expiration date. Often the food is made independently: it includes an animal base (fish, meat, insects), oatmeal, vitamins, fish oil, frozen spinach, water, gelatin, and so on. After cooking, the finished mixture is stored in the refrigerator.
Plant food. Often, fish calmly “dine” on algae (lemna, water fern, duckweed, Vallisneria, wolfia, naiad), in addition to the main diet, they are given chopped and scalded leaves of spinach, cabbage, lettuce, plantain, young nettle, dandelion, and tablet food is also sold .
Almost all the fish we keep in the aquarium are predators. They develop well and reproduce only when they are given live food. Only some aquarium fish, gourami for example, very love to eat plants- green algae. You have fish, but you couldn’t get food. What should I do? Not difficult make food for aquarium fish with your own hands at home.
What do aquarium fish eat?
For starters, regular meat, well dried and finely scraped with a knife, will help. The fish eat it willingly, but you just need to carefully remove its remains from the bottom before evening. For large breeds, for example, for goldfish, porridge (without salt and oil), well washed and boiled, is quite suitable. A loaf of bread crumbled into small pieces will also work.
But this is all just for the first time, what can you feed aquarium fish. “According to science,” the fish should be given, first of all, daphnia and cyclops. They are caught with a net covered with cellular fabric (knitted fabric) in ponds, where they stay off the coast in windward places from early spring to late autumn. The net is slowly moved near the surface in a circular motion, and the caught crustaceans are lowered into a jar of water. At home they are placed in a basin and then taken out as needed.
Caught daphnia can be dried - and then the fish will be provided with nutritious food even in winter. They are dried on thick fabric stretched over a wooden frame in a windless place, preferably under the rays of the sun. In winter, before feeding, add 5-6 drops of fish oil to a matchbox of dried homemade food.
A little more fiddling with the bloodworm. This red worm, a mosquito larva, likes to burrow into the mud. Bloodworms are the most nutritious food, and they must be given to fish before breeding. The sludge is thoroughly washed using a mesh. Store the bloodworms in water, in a cool place, preferably with drinking tea. You can also dry it for the winter and make fish food at home.
What to feed aquarium fish in the summer without buying food?
In summer, large fish are fed with chopped earthworms and tubifex worms - these live at the bottom of ponds. They are very mobile, quickly make their way through the holes of the floating feeder and climb into the sand. They are usually stored in a plate with water.
If there is no pond nearby, put a few daphnia in a barrel of water in the summer and regularly add one or two tablespoons of milk. In a week the fish will be provided with food.
Give bloodworms and daphnia for dessert, and grow the main food at home in a small box - these are potworms, white mobile worms about a centimeter long.
Take a box about 30 cm long, 20 cm wide and 15 cm deep. Fill it with good garden soil and drop in a few worms. Make a groove in the ground and place white bread soaked in milk in it. There should not be too much bread, mold on it will kill the worms. Fill the groove and moisten it slightly. Cover the top of the box with glass. The temperature should be room temperature. After just two weeks, there will be enough worms to feed 20 - 30 medium-sized fish.
They cannot be placed in the aquarium with soil. Take a handful of earth, place it on the glass, and heat it from below with an electric lamp. To escape the heat, the worms will crawl up and gather in a heap.
In the first days, it is best to feed the fry ciliates. It is not difficult to breed them yourself at home. To do this, put a banana peel or a little rotted hay (you can also put rotten roots of plants from an aquarium) in a three-liter jar of boiled water and add a few drops of milk. In three to four days there will be so many ciliates that the water will become cloudy.
If the fry were born suddenly and there are still few ciliates, at first you can get by with drops of yogurt or hard-boiled egg yolk rubbed through a strainer. Usually after a week to ten days the fry can already be fed with cut bloodworms and small crustaceans.
In summer, you should not neglect any insects - for example, those that flock to the light at night. Aquarium fish themselves will choose from them what they love to eat.
It is important to remember: neither live nor dry fish food should be left in the aquarium overnight. After feeding, be sure to remove all leftovers. From time to time you should arrange “hungry days” for the fish - let them eat the greenery that has grown on the walls and leaves of plants, this is very useful for them.
It is better to underfeed than to overfeed.
When purchasing aquarium fish as pets, you need to learn many nuances and rules for their maintenance and care. The future owner of the underwater kingdom faces many questions: how to choose a suitable aquarium, whether it is necessary to settle the water and what is the duration of settling, how to choose soil, and so on. But the most common question that arises is how to feed the fish in an aquarium and how many times a day this should be done.
A very important question to decide when buying fish is how to feed them.
Fish food types
In order for pets to please their owners with beauty and health, it is necessary to properly feed the fish in the aquarium. All existing types of feed can be divided into the following groups:
- frozen;
- branded (dry food);
- alive;
- vegetable.
Feed your fish a variety of foods Many novice aquarists mistakenly believe that it is better to frequently feed the fish in the aquarium only with dry food. But this is not true. Domestic inhabitants, like humans, should eat a variety of foods.
The variety of underwater inhabitants should be taken into account, since some fish prefer plant foods, while others choose exclusively live food. For ordinary species, it is better to focus on a combination of existing options for nutritional mixtures.
Rules for using dry food
Modern branded foods contain all the necessary substances for the inhabitants of the aquarium. Feeding rules should be considered:
- If you feed your pets exclusively with dry food, then, when very hungry, they attack the food, quickly swallowing it. This causes food to rot in their stomach. In addition, most of this food remains in the water, which subsequently has a negative impact on the composition of the liquid.
- The remains of dry food heavily pollute the underwater kingdom, which leads to intensive growth of pathological microorganisms. This can be fatal for pets.
- It is necessary to alternate different types of dry food with each other, since there are many varieties of such food for fish.
- It is not recommended to feed dried daphnia, since it contains practically no nutrients, but it contributes to stomach diseases in fish.
Feeding only one type of food is fraught with bad consequences for the fish and aquarium water.
Feeding with live food
Live food can be called one of the best options, which is recommended to be given to fish regularly. Variety should also be observed here. Live food mainly includes bloodworms, coretra and tubifex. But This type of nutrition has serious disadvantages:
- If the food turns out to be of poor quality, this can lead to poisoning of pets.
- Live food can cause some diseases.
- Bloodworms should not be given as food too often, as they are poorly digestible.
For disinfection, the food must be frozen. This is the most affordable way to rid food of harmful microorganisms. You can put food in the feeder, but you cannot leave it there for a long time, so that the inhabitants of the artificial house do not get poisoned.
The best food for fish is live
During the spawning period, live food is extremely necessary. Fish raised on this diet have good immunity and good health.
Plant-based menu
When purchasing aquarium fish from a seller, you should definitely ask about their nutritional preferences. Fish that do not accept plant foods is a relatively rare occurrence, and it is advisable to include greens in the diet. The exception is predators.
Most fish need plant food
You can buy branded plant foods on sale, which can be in the form of tablets or flakes. You can also feed the fish yourself by adding zucchini, cabbage, and cucumbers to the aquarium. Cereals are also used as plant nutrition. Before using, it is recommended to soak them in boiling water for a while, then, after cooling, start feeding.
Frozen food
Not every housewife will like worms crawling around in the refrigerator. This causes some people to feel disgust and other unpleasant sensations. In order not to put up with this unpleasant moment, there is an alternative to storing live fish food - freezing.
This type of food storage has some advantages:
- easy and long-term storage;
- the same composition of nutrients is retained as in live food;
- You can pre-observe the required dosage when freezing.
Frozen food can be purchased in the required dosage
Frozen foods are practically no different from live food, so you can safely use this type of storage.
Frequency and amount of feeding pets
Most owners of the underwater kingdom, not knowing the nutritional standards of fish, they are often overfed. This has an extremely negative impact on pets and can even lead to their death, which is why it is so important to know how many times to feed aquarium fish per day and how much food to give.
The dose is determined based on observations of the inhabitants of the aquarium. It is believed that at one time fish can be given as much food as they can consume within five minutes. If excess food does get into the vessel, it is recommended to remove it urgently to avoid rotting.
The individual dose is determined empirically
Many aquarists feed their pets 2 times a day, while others feed them once a day, teaching them to eat at the same time. These options are completely acceptable. Fry should be fed more often, on average 3-4 times a day. It is forbidden to give a large amount of food at one meal. It must be remembered that it is extremely undesirable to overfeed the inhabitants of the aquarium; sometimes it is better to underfeed them.
