hi there,
this is my first post :]

i have a pair of midas which i breed, and i have always been giving a whole diverse of food. the main food which i give in the mornings, is staple cichlid pellets and in the afternoon, i feed variety of frozen foods and/or freeze dried foods, and sometimes live foods. i like to feed dried krill or crab bits for bringing out the redness of their color.

recently, i have been informed that giving high-in-protein food such as beef heart may interfere with their health and color in the long term. is that true? if so, think i should cut back on beef heart completely? if they have been fed beef heart at very young age (as my fry do) would it be bad for them? i used to give beef heart about once per week, but im not going to feed anymore until i find out more about this. if theyre bad for midas, are they bad for other cichlids as well?

thanks in advance

Beef heart I don't think is really recommended these days, due to fish finding it hard to digest mammalian fats I think is the reason given. It seems that you give your midas a varied and healthy menu without the beef heart so I would just cut it out if I was you.

Beef heart used to be (and still is with some breeders) a popular food to feed to young discus, but I personally wouldn't use it and stick to 'fishy' foods.

I have to agree with shroob here, where it used to be a highly thought of food for cichlids espically large CA/SA cichlids as a good source of protien it is more or less frowned apon these days, my RD gets cichlid pellets, Krill, Scallops, Shrimp, Silversides, and during the summer months bettle grubs that I have dug up in my flower gardens.

thanks, im probably cutting off beef heart completely off their menu. any idea if the cause of problems is the amount of protein? like foods high in protein such as tubix worm, could they possibly be harmful in the long run as well? and so beef heart isnt just bad for midas, but for all fish? haha

You just don't want "too much" protein in their diet at the expense of vitamins and minerals... and carbohydrates, etc. That's the nice thing about cichlid pellets/sticks, is that they have a pretty balanced mix in there. Definitely worth mixing up the sources of proteins with a varied diet, though. Then you get different *kinds* of proteins in there, as well as break up the monotony of eating the same thing over and over again.

The other problem with too much protein at the expense of other nutrients, is that they're hard on the kidneys, and they're chocked full of nitrogen which then gets broken down, dumped out, and winds up going through the nitrogen cycle to increase your nitrates.

I find myself mostly feeding cichlid sticks in the morning and before fishy bedtime, and I try to give some sort of yummy dried treat (bloodworms, krill, etc) after work around 5-6pm. Seems to work OK so far. I do need to try and get more veggies in there for the sevs.

-Ryan

thanks everyone very much