Live Food....

[-germ-]

I may not be looking hard enough ( i doubt i am), but how often should my infant angels and gouramis be fed live food, does their age have any relation to their ability to digest live foods?
I'm feeding them a small pack of brine shrimp in the evening with one or two broken down flakes of fish food but they seem ravenous.....
It takes less than 10 seconds for all the shrimp to disappear and about a minute before the flakes are gone.
There are 4 gouramis and 4 angels in the tank.

 

[three-fingers]

Are you feeding them the brine shrimp you buy in little bags at the shop? Those have pretty poor nutritional content compared to other food.
If you want the best live food for feeding young fish (and the most nutricious live food for small fish) look into BBS (baby brine shrimp).
You buy the eggs for around £5 off ebay or somwhere, get your self an airpump with an airline, and two empty two litre bottles of cola and some sea salt or marine salt and you have yourself a very long lasting supply of very high quality bite sized live food .
http/www.aquariumhobbyist.com/mccainstro...brineshrimp.htm

 

[-germ-]

WaHey
Informative and you work at an LFS!

In my inexperienced opinion much respect due....
I'm just bought some blood worm are these nutrionally more beneficial, or does the same apply, i'll be starting a shrimp farm if........
my fish survive this next month, new tank
(i know, i know)
Could you recommend what you think is a good live food?
or
I bought some -brand-pro colour and some brand-pro veg, would these suffice for young fish
or should i stick to as varied a diet as possible?
Thanks for your advice.

 

[three-fingers]

Thanks for the kind words .

Blood worms are a good live food, but make sure you wash them in tap water first and never put any of the bag water in, they aren't as nutritional as BBS though.
Any live food should be fed as part of the fishes diet - not all of it. If you fed just one live food to fish, they would suffer from deficiencies, since one type of live food is not going to contain what they need.

A varied balanced diet is the best way to go, but even then I would still feed fish flakes or pellets (the ones you mention will be fine) to make sure the fish are getting all they need.

Personally, I only use live foods as a treat for the fish, frozen foods are cheaper, more convenient and safer . Go for a variety pack from your lfs, they cost around £2.20 and you get 4 different types of frozen food in one blister pack. If you have to choose just one, I would go for mysis shrimp, bloodworm or brine shrimp that have been gut loaded prior to feeding (often called 'enriched' with something).

BTW, how young are the fish we're talking about? BBS are usually used for raising young fry, but how big are these fish?

And when you say a new tank, do you mean it's cycling with baby fish in it?

 

[-germ-]

Cheers for the advice.
Ahem.....
Not exactly babies, but yes thats not far off the situation....
Search my member name and look at my other posts, especially the help.. topic, for a better handle on the current situation.
I have no idea of their exact age.

 

[vinylman]

If you do feed them frozen foods (which they'll love - but don't make it their main grub) go for Gamma frozen foods, the absolute safest with no chance of anything nasty getting into your fish's stomachs.

 

[-germ-]

Umm... The frozens a no can do, my freezer is awful, i got some frozen shrimp (can't remember the brand) and by feeding time 3 hours later there was shrimp juice everywhere....
Yummy
Trying to introduce some veg, ie. spinach, should i break it up or leave it whole? Let it float or weight it to the bottom of my tank?
Got some jellied shrimp treats, the fish love them, anything i should know about these?