Best Fish Food For My Plants!

[craynerd]

Basically, i have a planted tank coming along nicely and want to know what fish food i`m best using to produce least bad waste that may effect my plants, of course, that will keep my fish nice and healthy! Its only a shaol of cardinal tetras, 15 all together in a 19 US gallon.

The fish place said that flake contains a lot of phosphorus which can be bad for your plants...however reading EI i think maybe the guy was talking rubbish! So he gave me pellet, which are like tiny balls almost, and said about 1 per fish, without counting...does this sound good advice?

Any help or suggestions?

Chris

 

[Themuleous]

I think this is the advantage of understocking a tank, whatever food you add to the tank it'll add nutrients along with it, you cant help that. But by understocking and therefore adding less food than you would to a fully stocked tank, you'll be able to find the balance between the PO4 added from your fish food and what you need to add to get it to the right levels according to EI. But to be honest if you only have 15 cardinals in a 19g tank I dont think you need to worry very much, thats not very many fish at all!

All that said I could be talking rubbish too, anyone else have any thoughts?

Sam

 

[Bloo]

Well yes and no.

No, it's not going to be a problem to feed flake if you feed correctly (and not too much) and your tank is not overstocked.

Yes, it's more beneficial to feed crisps and pellet type food. The absorption rate is much higher and waste much less. So yes, it will make a difference - size of tank, stock levels etc. are all factors and will effect the effective outcome.
But some fish don’t like the crisp type food (tetra have several in their range) and takes a bit of getting used to. It’s also not that easy for really small fish to take a bite of crisp and I sometimes have to crumble the crisps a bit to make it easier to eat.