Types of foods for aquarium fish.
All types of feed can be divided into two groups: live and canned. Of course, preference should be given to all types of live food, although canned food has a major advantage in storage. Fish must receive enough quality food on time and be well-fed. Remember that live food is the most wholesome. Even with the finest artificial foods, high results in fish breeding cannot be achieved. Live food is essential for fish during the spawning period. Receiving a good portion of bloodworms or tubifex, fish are more willing to spawn. Fry raised on live food are resilient and less susceptible to diseases in the future.
Using bloodworms, rotifers, Daphnia, Cyclops, and especially tubifex for feeding fish is fraught with introducing pathogens and unwanted guests, as they inhabit silted, polluted areas where sewage flows in. Along with crustaceans and worms, disease pathogens and fish enemies (hydras, leeches, water mites, bugs) can be introduced into the aquarium. Fraction separation, careful inspection, and active rinsing of live food with tap water minimize this risk.
Live food must be rinsed in a net under the tap before feeding (this especially applies to tubifex and Cyclops). To rinse live food, you need separate nets made of dense 
gas fabric, which must be disinfected in potassium permanganate, methylene blue, chloramine, or a saturated salt solution. To collect small live food from the middle layer of water, a siphon is made — a glass tube with a rubber bulb attached to one end. For additional safety, live foods are disinfected with ozone (0.5-1 h), methylene blue (400 mg/l – 5 min), or erythrycline (250 mg/l – 1h). Heavily polluted food is kept in running or frequently changed water for 3-5 days. All types of live food last longer at low temperatures. Some aquarists do not feed tubifex to valuable fish, fearing poisoning.
Most fish species should not be given live food in excess — having had enough, fish continue to hunt the crustaceans, and after catching them, spit them out, after which they settle to the bottom and decompose, spoiling the water. Bloodworms and worms that the fish do not have time to eat burrow into the substrate. Bloodworms will further turn into mosquitoes at best; at worst, they die, rot, and cause fish poisoning. Frozen food must be fed immediately after thawing. Live food is best given in small portions several times a day. It is generally accepted that if the fish, having eaten the food in 15-20 minutes, swim away and show no active desire to continue feeding, they can be considered full.
Bloodworms and tubifex can be given in a specially available feeder with holes in the bottom. Its advantage is that live specimens crawl into the water themselves, while sluggish and dead ones remain in the feeder. A clump of bloodworms thrown into the water quickly sinks to the bottom. As a result, the larvae only reach bottom-dwelling fish or burrow into the substrate. The feeder, however, ensures a uniform supply of bloodworms to the fish. Besides, the fish will take only live bloodworms or tubifex, since dead ones will remain in the feeder.
If they cannot cope with the food or chew and spit it out, it means it is unsuitable. Bloodworms, tubifex, and Enchytraeidae can be fed chopped into small pieces. To keep the feeder always at the water level, you should use a suction cup with a hook 2-3 cm long. Cyclops and other crustaceans can be placed in a dark glass jar lowered into the aquarium 3-5 cm below the water level; live crustaceans swim out to the light, while dead ones remain in the jar.
For a beginner aquarist, in order to balance the feeding diet as much as possible, it is advisable at least to diversify the menu, not being too lazy to find the slightest opportunity to alternate foods, trying to increase the number of components. At the same time, one should stick to the rule of using only fresh or freshly prepared foods; many types of preserved foods, when stored for a long time, oxidize and lose their nutritional properties. Overfeeding with pelleted and extruded foods, which tend to swell in water and in the fish’s stomach, sharply increasing in volume, is especially dangerous. Therefore, you need to feed such foods carefully, in small portions.
When keeping fish in an aquarium, difficulties sometimes arise with acquiring live food. Therefore, aquarists quite often feed fish with canned, or rather dry, food. Dry single-ingredient (Daphnia, Cyclops, Gammarus, bloodworms) and other artificial foods (paste, pellets, or flakes) should be a temporary measure in your pets’ diet. High-quality dry brand foods contain almost all the elements necessary for fish, but they must be used with caution.
Many believe that one, or at best two or three types of dry food is enough for this purpose. Some aquarists even raise fish fry on dry food. Naturally, such fish grown exclusively on dry food is poorly developed and incapable of reproduction. Dry food is of low nutrition, and it is recommended to use it temporarily when live food is unavailable, because no dry food in terms of nutritional qualities will ever replace live food. Moreover, fish eat live food much better than dry food.
If your main goal is keeping a decorative aquarium rather than raising breeding fish and reproducing them, the feeding process can be modified. In this case, you should completely abandon live foods from natural water bodies and instead use frozen, dry, and combined food sources. Such a feeding diet is commonly used by many experienced hobbyists of decorative aquariums, as it completely eliminates the possibility of introducing unwanted animals and microorganisms.
A big mistake is a monotonous diet. Despite all the variety and availability of various foods, a beginner hobbyist “stuffs” their pets day after day with the same food. The choice of feeds is very large; their skillful combination and alternation will allow you to grow healthy fish and focus on more interesting aspects of the underwater realm. Do not forget that fish are mostly predators; very few species among them feed exclusively on plant foods.
The discharge of long thread-like excrement is a consequence of stable overfeeding and monotonous feeding, leading to acute constipation. A lack of protein and amino acids manifests in numerous pathological symptoms. If an amino acid such as Tryptophan is absent from the diet, it leads to spinal curvature. These symptoms disappear within 1-2 weeks if Tryptophan is added to the feed. With a protein deficiency, all body organs are affected. Excessive amounts of food (especially protein) consumed by fish lead to increased ammonia excretion by the fish. If the fat content of the feed for herbivorous fish exceeds 3%, and for carnivorous fish exceeds 5%, fish obesity often occurs.
Main types of feed for aquarium fish.
• Live and of animal origin: “infusoria dust” — freshwater plankton, Paramecium, rotifers, Daphnia, Cyclops, Corethra, bloodworms, glassworm larvae, mayfly larvae, fruit flies, tubifex, enchytraeids, nematodes, grindal worms, earthworms, meat, eggs;
• Dry: Daphnia, Cyclops, Gammarus, bloodworms, tubifex;
• Frozen: Daphnia, Cyclops, bloodworms, Artemia, krill;
• Plant-based: lettuce leaves, stinging nettle, soft aquarium plants; compound feeds.
Among the most common natural feeds are Daphnia, Cyclops, bloodworms, Corethra, and tubifex. Another type of live food, Artemia, can be bought in pet stores or hatched at home from eggs. You can dig up earthworms in the garden and collect aphids, provided you haven’t used insecticides. Earthworms eaten by large fish can be chopped for feeding smaller species. Fish with large mouths can be offered woodlice. You can put one or two buckets of water in the garden to regularly collect mosquito larvae. If you have a barrel of water, Daphnia can be collected from it all the time. In addition, fish can be fed gray-black mosquito larvae — glassworms (family Culicidae), potworms (Enchytraeidae), flies and their larvae, caterpillars (non-hairy), cockroaches, crickets, aquatic and terrestrial mollusks.
Large live food: For cichlids, large characins, and other fish, the most suitable live food is: fry, tadpoles, smooth caterpillars, aquatic insects and their larvae, woodlice, earthworms, mealworms, snails, fruit worms, bloodworms, flies, and other flying insects.
Medium live food: Medium-sized live food consists of: bloodworms, tubifex, enchytraeids (earthworms), chopped or small earthworms, Daphnia, small flies and larvae, leaf aphids.
Small live food: Small live food means Daphnia and Cyclops, tiny mosquito larvae, small tubifex (mostly red), grindal worms, gnats, Drosophila, nauplii (Cyclops or Daphnia larvae), and other types of live food in crushed form. When live food is not at hand, you can replace it with scraped meat, chopped mussels, or snails. Even those fish that are considered very picky eaters (such as various Symphysodon species) gladly accept so-called scraped meat for a long time if it is properly prepared.
Live food for feeding aquarium fish.
Feeding schedule for aquarium fish. Feeding frequency. 
Latest changes and additions made on August 29, 2012.
