Feeding Fish...

[lee.barros]

I have TetraMin Tropical flakes and Tropical Pellets for my 4 Copper Harlequins and 2 Leopard Cory. Ive been reading about algae wafers for the Cory...are these any good comapred to the tropical pellets.

Also, im interested in feeding them brine shrimp, ive seen the kits you can make to hatch them and it seems like a good way to make your own fish food. Does anyone have any recommended feeding plans for tropical fish?

Cheers!

 

[KittyKat]

What you want is something along the lines of "sinking wafers" by Hikari, for the corys.

Alive live foods are not worth it.. too much bother, in my opinion. You might as well try frozen foods.

If your tank is not cycling, and can take more fish, you should add a couple more harlequins and 4 more corys, both groups are schooling fish.

 

[Curiosity101]

So long as you stick to relatively high protein foods you wont go far wrong. Mine get cichlid pellets, catfish pellets, tropical granules, tropical flake, algae wafers, frozen bloodworm and frozen daphnia.

Live food is very good for fish if you can be bothered to culture it, but I do agree with kitty cat that for small scale private tanks it's too much messing about for me.

 

[lee.barros]

What you want is something along the lines of "sinking wafers" by Hikari, for the corys.

Alive live foods are not worth it.. too much bother, in my opinion. You might as well try frozen foods.

If your tank is not cycling, and can take more fish, you should add a couple more harlequins and 4 more corys, both groups are schooling fish.

My tank is 60L, would adding another 4 corys be ok? I also plan to get a school of neon tetras at some point in the next couple of weeks once the current fish have settled in.

Im not too bothered about making the live food, if it means better for the fish then i aint too bothered. How often would you feed the fish the brine shrimp?

 

[Curiosity101]

Hmm, how about...

5 copper harlequins
5 neons
5 leopard corys

That should be ok.

And yes live food is often better, it tends to give faster growth rate, better colours, more spawning behaviour etc. But it's definitely not needed.
If I were hatching brineshrimp I would feed it most days, however to be fair it's only my harlequins and apisto that would benefit. The corys are much more worm orientated.

 

[lee.barros]

That stock list sounds decent, cheers for that

Regarding the feed for the fish. Are the algae wafers best for the corys and flakes/pellets for the others along with the corys too? And every few days give them a treat of some frozen food? Ive seen the frozen food in the pet shop and the cubes are pretty big, I assume that you only use a small piece of each cube per feed?

 

[Curiosity101]

Algae wafers aren't very good for corys at all, certainly not as a staple. Mine only get them cause I pop a 1/4 of one in every couple of days for my apple snails.

The corys get a high protein diet of various pellets, granules and frozen bloodworm.

You're right about the size of the cubes by the way. I tend to pop them in a little bit of water and swill them round so that the first few layers defrost and the worms or daphnia seperate off of the rest of the block.
When about half has come off the block I put the rest straight back in the freezer.

My corys get frozen bloodworm around 3 times a week.

 

[mrs biffster]

I used to feed my bristlenose plecs on algea wafers and they loved them. I would feed my fish on live brine shrimp and daphnia to bring them into breeding condition. Newly hatched brine shrimp for fry.

 

[lee.barros]

I found this on ebay: Click Here Would these be ideal as a feed for the corys/harlequins/neons? That on top of some frozen food such as the bloodworms or daphnia? Sorry for being a pest, I just need to get away from using flakes as they are getting stuck on the plants in the tank

 

[Curiosity101]

ANYTHING high protein will be good (most general tropical fish foods are high protein). Corys aren't herbivores, they like nothing better than worms and other wriggly things.

They'll survive on algae based products but you're never going to see them at their best if that's what they're normally being fed.

 

[lee.barros]

Im going to look into getting frozen foods, Bloodworms/Cyclops etc... I can get 5X 100g blister packs for just under £10 which is pretty decent.

This along with the pellets I have already should do the job.

When feed the frozen food, do you just break it up and put it in the tank or do you have to hold it at the top of the tank just under the water? (Stupid question I know )

 

[KittyKat]

I would probably go as far as having 6 of each species.

As for frozen cubes, I just cut them to size with a bread knife (be careful not to cut yourself!). I just put the cube in the water and then irritate it with my fingers to make the food come off. I have fish who will try to eat it whole while it is still frozen.

I prefer to feed frozen foods only once or twice per week.