Did you know that about 50% of the time your fish could avoid and/or recover from illness if given the proper nutrition? If you go into your local PetBig you will find a myriad of different types of fish food. Not only do you have the choice of whether your fish would like pellets, flakes, sticks, and the occasional freeze dried food; they all have a specific use. There is the general diet, the vegetable diet, foods for carnivorous fish, color enhancing foods, and even medicated foods. Now with all of these choices how do you know which one is good for your fish?
The first step is to determine what type of fish you have. If you have no idea what type of fish you just bought, research about it on the internet. It is extremely important to know the dietary requirements of your fish. Without the proper nutrition their immune systems will not function properly thereby leaving them more susceptible to disease. If the aquarium is stocked with both herbivores and carnivores feed them a combination of the two types of foods. There is no rule against feeding fish a mixture of foods. The fish will tend to select the foods they like and ignore that which they don’t like.
Secondly deciding on the texture of the food depends on the preference of the fish. The nutritional value of a flake food versus a pellet is negligible when compared to one another, so both are a good choice for your fish. Although, some fish may have a preference of one over the other which will become obvious during each feeding. This preference will ultimately determine which food to feed your fish. So my recommendation is to buy the smallest sized container of a flake food and a pellet food that you think your fish might like and try it out. As for the freeze-dried variety of food whether it be worms, brine shrimp, or water fleas, these can also be incorporated into your fish’s diet. Use them as a supplement to the flake and/or pellet food they receive on a daily basis.
So a balanced flake food should suffice for most freshwater fish. There are specialty foods available for cichlids, goldfish, and strictly carnivorous fish, but overall a well balanced diet will do the trick. For marine fish, in my experience, I have found that an all around flake/pellet food in conjunction with the brand P.E. Mysis is a great diet. I make sure that the dry food has the ingredient spirulina in it, and I try to use only this brand of mysis shrimp. It seems that these shrimp are the largest, most nutritious frozen shrimp on the market today. Now, these shrimp can also be fed to freshwater fish, but due to the high cost, I usually only feed them to saltwater and prized freshwater fish. There are more types of foods that can be fed to your fish, but that will be addressed in a future post. So, that being said, go now, equipped with this information, and feed your fish some ono grinds (tasty food)!
Let us know how we are doing. Leave a comment telling us what you would like to know more of, less of, or anything else about fish.
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Thanks Jason I’m going to petbig today to see what I can find hopefully my fish like eating healthy
Thanks Jason I’ll be checking back soon
John