Food & Feeders - Underwater Eco Systems
The Fine Art of Feeding Aquarium Fish
There's a lot to keep in mind when taking care of an aquarium, let alone the fish or other critters in it. But you can take care of both by learning how to properly feed your fish. You will go through a couple of weeks of trial and error to find the best food types and amounts for your particular fish, but you will figure it out.
Carnivore or Herbivore?
Please don’t get fish if you don’t know what they eat. If you someone dumps an aquarium on your doorstep, don’t assume all fish eat the same thing. They don’t. Some are herbivores, some carnivores and many need a mix. By determining if your fish should mostly eat meat or mostly eat plant matter, you can help determine what ingredients to look for in fish food.
What to Feed your fish
Commercial fish food has come a long way in quality and nutrition in just the last few years. Many species of aquarium fish can thrive on being fed a couple of kinds of commercial foods. Rotate the kinds to give your fish variety. If you don't breed your fish, then you can keep them on commercial foods. Breeders need some fresh food in order to get them into breeding condition.
You can add some fresh food as treats, depending on what kind of foods your fish eats. Many fish like washed green lettuce or thawed frozen peas as treats. Other meat eating fish like feeder crickets. It's not good to feed meat eating fish live feeder fish, as these little feeders often can give diseases to your carnivorous fish.
Affect On the Tank
It's important that you don’t feed your fish too much. Decaying food means more work for your filters to do and gets the tank water dirty much more quickly. Even if your fish find and eat all of the food you give them, their extra waste will also be a stress on the aquarium's delicate chemical balance.
This is different for each aquarium. Most fish keepers like to offer food to their fish at least once a day. The fish should feed immediately. Any commercial, frozen or freeze-dried food should be eaten within two minutes. Any feeder crickets or cut up earthworms should be eaten without delay. If the fish isn’t interested in ten minutes, remove the food before it starts to decay.
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