How to feed

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Spen2cer

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So I am going to get water sprite, but also want to feed them lettuce and flakes. Will they be able to get to it?
 
I doubt gourami will eat lettuce, and even if they do, it has basically no nutrient value. Prepared dry flake foods are good. And yes, they will eat with floating plants covering the surface. Gourami need to surface to take in air to breathe, so there should be some fairly open areas, but it does not take much.

Good foods many of us here recommend are the New Life Spectrum and Omega One brands. I use the basic freshwater flake of NLS, and from Omega One I use the kelp flake and shrimp flake. I recommend these two brands because they do not have flour or meal fillers, just whole fish and vitamins. If you have substrate fish too (kuhlii loaches I believe were mentioned in another thread?) you need some sinking foods intended for cories and loaches; these will not eat floating flake foods even if they sink. Omega One make a good shrimp pellet, and a Veggie round. Even if the fish are primarily carnivores or omnivores as opposed to vegetarian, it is good to use one veggie-based food. With two or three flake foods, you feed them on alternate days so day 1 is "A", day 2 is "B", etc.
 
I am going to get that when I get the fish. Thanks for the suggestion
 
I received two emails of posts to this thread, one is showing here (#3) but the other is not. I will respond to your comment in the missing post just in case.

Mixing various brands/types of food is not advisable. This does not mean it will cause any direct harm to the fish, but the reason for using different foods is to ensure a better diet but also that the fish are eating it. Some fish do not like certain foods, just like humans. Only giving them one food a day means they either eat it or go hungry; going hungry is not going to harm them either, for a day or even more, but they are more likely to eat what you give them if there is not something "better" available.

The reason I do not recommend Tetra foods is due to the additives; these are frankly not that good for fish. Here again, they are obviously not going to die from less-healthy foods, but fish nutrition is rather complicated and we want the healthiest fish to be able to fight off other issues. So good foods are important, and filling them up with cereals and meals is not the way to go. I only use one such food among my others, as it has earthworms and the cories love it, and once or at most twice a week is not going to cause harm like feeding every day with additive-foods could.
 
I received two emails of posts to this thread, one is showing here (#3) but the other is not. I will respond to your comment in the missing post just in case.

Mixing various brands/types of food is not advisable. This does not mean it will cause any direct harm to the fish, but the reason for using different foods is to ensure a better diet but also that the fish are eating it. Some fish do not like certain foods, just like humans. Only giving them one food a day means they either eat it or go hungry; going hungry is not going to harm them either, for a day or even more, but they are more likely to eat what you give them if there is not something "better" available.

The reason I do not recommend Tetra foods is due to the additives; these are frankly not that good for fish. Here again, they are obviously not going to die from less-healthy foods, but fish nutrition is rather complicated and we want the healthiest fish to be able to fight off other issues. So good foods are important, and filling them up with cereals and meals is not the way to go. I only use one such food among my others, as it has earthworms and the cories love it, and once or at most twice a week is not going to cause harm like feeding every day with additive-foods could.
That’s what I’ll do then. Once a week at most, and if they don’t like the tetra food, even better. I had it on hand, but didn’t want to make the common mistake of feeding the wrong food, or doing something stupid like that, then losing a fish
 
Buy the small sized containers, as you will not be using much of it. And you can freeze it as once opened it can deteriorate; removing a small amount for feeding over a few weeks with the rest frozen, then take out a bit more and so on.

I should also mention about feeding amounts and times...for some reason packages of just about every food will recommend several times a day. Nonsense. Once a day is sufficient for fish other than fry which do need more often (though that is relative too and depends upon the species) and you can miss a day or two each week. Water change day is one to skip at least before the water change; fish should never be fed prior to anything that might stress them. Wait an hour or two after, that is when I feed their weekly treats (frozen daphnia and bloodworms) as a reward for having put up with my crashing about their home. And I skip a day later in the week. So they are fed prepared foods three days, something different each day, then miss a day, then two days with the prepared food again different each day, then the W/C day.

Amount should be no more than they can eat in several seconds. My upper fish never go beyond a minute cleaning up what I feed. The substrate fish are different, as loaches and cories will take a few hours to deal with the pellets, tablets, disks. Don't overfeed; fish should always seem hungry.
 
I already had some tetra, so I am just going to get the omega one when I get the fish, feeding them treats on water change day. Sounds easy, and will make the fish happy. Getting some bloodworms as well for the treats.
 
I already had some tetra, so I am just going to get the omega one when I get the fish, feeding them treats on water change day. Sounds easy, and will make the fish happy. Getting some bloodworms as well for the treats.

The bloodworms are the frozen packages, in the freezer section. Not the dried or "freeze-dried" packages which are not good and can cause intestinal problems.
 

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