Discussion:Fish Nutrition and Feeding

Hi All
Since getting some cichlids I have been more interested in fish nutrition. There is alot of info out there but so much is contradictory its hard to know what to believe.
Things I would like to see discussed are:
Feeding quantity, how much how often?
Do people tailor diets to specific fish types?
What kind of foods? do you make/grow your own?
Things to avoid feeding.
Another thing that seems to be pretty hot is feeding beef heart, the way I understand it is fat from warm blooded animals is unusable to fish being cold blooded and can cause liver disease. Is this correct? and would feeding shrimp or salmon chunks be a better alternative.

I think keeping healthy fish is as important as healthy plants It would be nice to see this discussed on UKAPS there are a lot of very good people with very different backgrounds who know their stuff and I think a lot could be learnt in one place instead of having to troll the net for it and still not knowing whether to trust the info or not. I for one would like to do some leaning.

Regards,

Ollie
P.S. Play nice

Hi all,
Have a look at http://www.dwarfcichlid.com/Good_food.php, I haven't been able to get Blackworms in the UK, but if any-one does have some? I'd be very interested.

I keep Daphnia, Grindal worm, Red worm and Microworm cultures, and I have buckets in the garden to attract Mosquitoes and Blood worm (another Mosquito), you can get blood worms from the buckets even in the winter.

I don't tend to feed mine any non-live food in the summer (I also feed Fruit Fly larvae, Ostracods, Copepods, swimming Mayfly etc), in the winter they get some Glass worms (another midge larvae) and Blood worms, and a small pinch of Grindals every day. I also feed the red Astax crumb from TA aquaculture and I've made the shrimp mix (from Ad Konings "Enjoying Cichlids"): I used 2:1 shell on Mysis shrimp : shell on peas, enough gelatin to bind the mix and a sprinkle of spirulina powder & paprika. I freeze it in ice cubes and I only ever feed it if I'm really short of live food. I throw away far more red crumb than the fish ever eat (after 2 years from purchase, kept in the fridge) and I've only ever made one lot of "shrimp mix" up.

If I was restricted in what I could keep I would keep Grindal and Red worms (Lumbricus rubellus), as the cultures are very low maintenance indeed and you get a good range of food sizes from them. I've also found that RCS are a popular food item with the fish, and breed fast enough to be an option (these also come in a range of sizes from shrimplets up). The other thing I like is a good layer of "biofilm", on moss tangles etc for the fry.

cheers Darrel

Found some Australian Black Worm (Lumbriculus variegatus) if this is what your looking for http://www.ta-aquaculture.co.uk/ They have just got it in.

Ollie

Hi all,
Ollie, they are what I want, but as a live culture. I want to establish them in the substrate of the aquarium, hopefully with a core area where they fish can't access, the idea is that as the colony grows worms will become available to the fish around it's edge.
cheers Darrel