How to feed baby flowerhorn fish

What To Feed Baby Flowerhorn? Let's Find Out!

Baby Flowerhorn or fryling are fragile and vulnerable. They need special care and attention in the initial days for long-term health. Nurturing your frylings at the beginning of their life includes their feeding too. Do you know what to feed your baby flowerhorn?

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You have to feed different food to your baby flowerhorn, such as infusoria, brine shrimp, hard-boiled egg yolk, and crushed pellets. Then, slowly you step to feeding brine shrimp, frozen bloodworms, daphnia, mosquito larvae, etc. Finally, you can even feed powder food.

The information above might confuse you, and any queries related to food might arise. Thus, to get more information about feeding baby Flowerhorn, I suggest you go through this article to the end. I hope you find this article helpful.

Table of Contents

What To Feed Your Baby Flowerhorn?

Well, babies are always vulnerable, and you need to allocate more time to them than adult fish. You need to take precautions and feed them properly to avoid any epidemic or loss.

You need to feed different food at different stages to ensure rapid growth, including the baby stage of flowerhorn. For this, I have differentiated food depending upon the ages of fryling or baby Flowerhorn.

After Hatching To 4-5 days

They still possess egg sacs until the fry reaches the free-swimming stage or four to five days. This egg sac provides nutrients to the newly hatched frying. Thus, you don’t have to feed anything extra till then.

One To Two Weeks

Start feeding with infusoria, hard-boiled egg yolk, etc. You can eventually introduce baby brine shrimp. Likewise, you even can feed powdered or crushed fish pellets. You have to feed 4-10 times per day as the nutrient requirement of fryling is very high.

Feeding this often might pollute water; thus, you need to change water frequently.

After First Few Weeks

The nutritional requirement of the fry will increase at this point in age; thus, you need to increase the quantity and quality of the meal. By saying this, I suggest you introduce a high protein diet like live daphnia, scuds, or small shrimp species.

The growth rate of each fry is not the same. Thus, at this point, you need to separate bigger flowerhorn babies and smaller ones.

Two To Three Months

Here, you can introduce flake food, worms like blackworms and white worms, and other meat products like crickets, mealworms, bloodworms, Mysis shrimp, etc.; these foods are available in live form and frozen and dried forms.

What Are The Benefits Of Feeding Baby Flowerhorn?

Food is the energy source for all living creatures. Therefore, there are immense benefits to feeding your baby Flowerhorn. I have jotted down some of the benefits.

Energy And Bodybuilding

The food you feed to your fry will either provide energy or help in growth. Carbs, protein, and fat from different sources of food such as fruits, veggies, pellets, and meat: frozen, dried, or live, provide an adequate amount of energy and helps in the bodybuilding of Flowerhorn.

Growth And Development

Food is the most important for the growth and development of your Flowerhorn. You need to meet the nutritional requirements of your Flowerhorn for its rapid growth and sustained life. You may lose your fry when you don’t feed adequate food to your Fry.

Growth Of Hump

Hump slowly starts to grow in Flowerhorn fry. When your Flowerhorn reaches 1.5 inches, the hump starts to develop. You have to feed a proper meal to see the growth of hump in your Flowerhorn fry.

Color Enhancement

Quality of diet and quantity of feed directly impacts the color of your Flowerhorn. As the fry grows, the color also enhances, but the color fades away without proper feed. As a result, the vibrant color will not appear in your Flowerhorn, certainly disappointing you.

Control Aggressiveness

As Flowerhorn is naturally more aggressive than other fish breeds, delay of feed creates more aggressiveness in your Flowerhorn. They will show aggressiveness in other tank mates, normally another fryling in the tank. That might even lead to the death of some baby Flowerhorn.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Overfeeding Baby Flowerhorn?

Overfeeding is not good for your baby flowerhorn and the tank’s environment. Overfeeding causes many digestion problems and other ample disadvantages to your baby Flowerhorn. I have listed some of those negative effects below.

Digestion Problems

Overfeeding does hamper the digestive system of your baby Flowerhorn. Although your baby Flowerhorn’s nutritional requirement is more, overfeeding does no good to them. Indigestion problems, constipation, and bloating might result from overfeeding.

Contaminates Tank’s Environment

The leftover food from the baby Flowerhorn goes and settles down on the substrate, which results in polluting water. The contaminated water enhances infections among the fry, which is already fragile.

You need to clean the tank often if you overfed fry. This creates an unnecessary workload for you and stresses out your fry too.

Encounters Infection

Overfeeding might lower the immunity of your Flowerhorn; thus, they might encounter infections easily. Bad rearing practices and lack of sanitation too lead to infection. Moreover, the leftover food in the tank aids in incrementing ammonia, enhancing the foul smell.

How Often Should You Feed Baby Flowerhorn?

Whether a baby human, animal, or fish, growth is rapid in the initial days after birth, to support this rapid growth, you need to provide sufficient food to your baby Flowerhorn.

During the initial weeks after hatching, you have to feed around 4 times per day. As the nutritional requirement of the fry is high, you should give more time and care to the fry.

As the fryling grows, you can eventually reduce the feed times to 3 times a day until it becomes an adult. It is so because your adult Flowerhorn needs a minimum gap of eight hours between meals to maintain a healthy digestive system.

What Is The Best Food For Baby Flowerhorn?

Despite the variety of food, you can feed the fryling, there is some really good food for the baby Flowerhorn. This includes live foods. Although there are other good foods and you can feed those too, here I am only talking about the best.

Live Food

Live foods are the best source of proteins and essential nutrients like vitamins and minerals. You probably might know that live food is away from processing; they contain trace minerals.

Moreover, Flowerhorn enjoys live food due to the activeness of food. Live food like brine shrimp, daphnia, super worms, mosquito larvae, bloodworms, earthworms, etc.

Live food has an extra advantage that does benefit your fry more than any other form of food due to its freshness and liveliness.

Despite ample benefits, these live foods are capable of transmitting parasitic infection. Thus, you need to ensure that they are free from such infections and buy from an authentic food store. Here are some of my recommendations for live as well as freeze-dried flowerhorn food.

Hikari Flowerhorn Fish Food
OKIKO flowerhorn Cichlid Fish
Fluval A6581 Bug Bites Cichlid Pellets
Amzey Dries Shrimp Fish Foods
Appetizing Shrimp Mealworms
Tetra Jumbokrill Jumbo Shrimp

What Are The Points To Consider While Feeding A Baby Flowerhorn?

There are great points that you should consider while feeding your baby Flowerhorn. Fryling is naturally vulnerable and is at risk. Due to this reason, fish keepers like you should provide a little more care to them and consider the following points while feeding frylings.

You need to consider the amount of feed as per the nutritional requirement of frylings.
A number of times, you should feed them. You can feed fries 2 or 3 times per day.
It would help if you kept in mind the types of food you need to avoid.
Need to know the categories of food that help in the smooth growth and development of your Flowerhorn.
It would help if you observed whether each fry is getting enough food or not.

How To Know You Are Overfeeding baby Flowerhorn?

Whenever you overfeed your baby Flowerhorn, they will show less interest in the food. They become less active than usual, lose aggressiveness and feel uncomfortable.

The other way that you know you overfed your fryling is to see if any food particles are at the bottom of the tank or not. Food excess than requirement settles down on the substrate and contaminates the water.

Mind extra particles in the tank; these particles release toxins by clogging the filter. Hence you should strictly avoid overfeeding your fryling.

FAQs

How To Make A Baby Flowerhorn Grow Faster?

Growth depends on diet, nutrition, and environmental factors like temperature, pressure, pH, etc. Even hygiene and sanitation of the tank, water quality, and filtration either directly or indirectly affect the growth of Flowerhorn.

You have to introduce healthy, nutritionally rich food in the proper amount and time to make them grow faster. Likewise, you also have to change the water frequently, maintain incorrect pH and temperature and ensure sanitation of the tank for the faster growth of the baby Flowerhorn.

How To Decrease The Death Of Baby Flowerhorn?

The death of a baby fish indicates so many things. First, it questions the nitrogen cycle, tank size, and tank mates with which you are keeping your fry.

Likewise, fish death even doubts water parameters like temperature and pH. Among these many factors, the disbalance of a single parameter might result in the death of the fryling.

In addition to this, the tank’s inadequate diet and filthy environment are the basic things that might also result in the death of baby Flowerhorn.

Thus if you master these parameters and maintain a healthier tank environment, you can reduce the death of your fryling.

How To Maintain A Favorable Environment For Baby Flowerhorn?

You need to ensure that your tank has good filtration. Also, make sure the water quality in the tank is good enough, along with the size of the tank.

You have to observe whether the baby Flowerhorns are getting enough space in the tank for mobility. You can even maintain a favorable environment for baby Flowerhorn by changing the water regularly.

All these reduce the chances of infection in the tank and maintain a healthy environment for baby Flowerhorn.

Conclusion

As baby Flowerhorn is very fragile and needs special attention, you need to take care of their diet. You can feed them a highly nutritious, proteinous diet for proper and smooth growth and development. Live food like brine shrimp, daphnia, super worms, mosquito larvae, bloodworms, earthworms, etc., are the best source of protein. You can even feed fish pellets, powered frozen, sun-dried, and other commercialized fish food, ensuring your fryling meets its nutritional requirement.

I hope this article addresses all your queries about feeding Flowerhorn fry or baby. For more information on Flowerhorn and other fish breeds, you can visit our website, Fishkeeping guide.

Happy Fishkeeping!

Flowerhorn Cichlid Species Profile

Flowerhorn cichlids aren’t found in nature. They are a man made hybrid that includes the genetics of several related Central American cichlids. Taiwanese and Malaysian fish breeders started mixing cichlid varieties in the 1990’s to try and maximize the distinctive hump and colors of adult male fish.

The exact species blend depends on the flower horn fish breed. Most have midas cichlid (Amphilophus citrinellus), trimac cichlid (Amphilophus trimaculatus) and red devil cichlids (Amphilophus labiatus) as grandparents. Red parrot cichlids have been mixed with some bloodlines.

All flowerhorn cichlid breeds share the same care requirements. They are hardy, interactive fish that are undemanding in terms of diet and water conditions. These fish enjoy digging and will undo any aquascaping you create. Flowerhorns are aggressive towards their tank mates and do well when kept alone.

Common Names: Flowerhorn Cichlid; Flower Horn Fish; Luohan
Scientific Name: Amphilophus species hybrid
Origin: Hybrid Central American cichlid
Length: 12 to 15 inches
Tank Size: 75+ Gallons
Temperament: Aggressive
Ease of Care: Easy

Types of Flowerhorn Cichlids

Flowerhorn cichlids are bred for variety. Some, such as the Kamfa, have a well developed nuchal hump or kok in Malaysian. Many male cichlids have one and Central American species have very large humps. Kamfa flowerhorns have dark red scales with white and blue marbling along their sides. The blocky body of a flowerhorn resembles a ‘kaloi,’ or warship.

The first flowerhorn fish were called luohan cichlids. Their colors were gold and red, with bright red eyes. As more color varieties and genetics were introduced, luohan gave way to other breeds. Original luohan fish are rare and expensive.

Trimac cichlid genes give breeds like the Golden Monkey or Kamalau black spots along their flanks. These spots are the “flowers” that give flowerhorns their name and are also called “pearling.”

Flower spots increase the value of the fish; one Golden Monkey flowerhorn cichlid sold for $600,000 at a Malaysian exhibition in 2009. Other breeds that have strong flower patterns include the Zhen Zhu, a rounder variety, and the Gold Monkey, which is the last luohan variety.

Golden Base flowerhorns are a popular breed, with marbled patterns similar to a marble betta fish. They are also called Faders since their colors change as the fish grows up. Young Golden Base are red and gold. They shift to black for a period. And then back to red and gold as they reach sexual maturity.

The vibrant yellow, red, and orange tones of flowerhorn breeds, along with their head humps, are why East Asian cultures believe that these fish are lucky. Like gold Asian arowanas, it is common to see flowerhorn fish tanks in hotel lobbies, high end restaurants, and other quality establishments.

Newer breeds offer more color choices, like the Thai Silk flowerhorn. It is one of the newest electric blue cichlids, with genes from the electric blue jack dempsey.

Flowerhorn Male vs Female

It is easy to tell the sexes apart in mature flowerhorn cichlids. A rare adult female may have a small nuchal hump. A male’s will always be much larger. His colors will be more intense and his dorsal and anal fins have distinctive points. A male fish is 50-100% larger than a female of the same age.

These qualities aren’t 100% reliable since there is so much variation in flowerhorn bloodlines. A sure way to tell is to examine the sexual organ once it descends. A male’s is V-shaped while a female’s ovipositor is U-shaped.

Flowerhorn Cichlid Tank Size

Flowerhorns are big fish that don’t need a giant aquarium. 75 gallons is the minimum for a single adult. A 55 gallon aquarium is what many aquarists choose yet it’s only 12 inches wide. That’s too small for an adult flowerhorn.

A 75 gallon tank is the same length as a 55 and at 18 inches wide your flowerhorn will have more space to turn. 90 gallons is more comfortable for a full grown flowerhorn pair that isn’t spawning.

Flowerhorn Water Parameters

Central American cichlids are very hardy and flowerhorn fish are no exception. They prefer neutral to alkaline water conditions (pH 7.0-8.0) and water with low to moderate mineral content. That is what tap water chemistry in most countries already tests at. Raising the pH is easy to do if necessary.

Some of the more inbred flowerhorn varieties like the Thai Silk flowerhorn are sensitive to ammonia. Other varieties will tolerate low levels of ammonia and nitrite.

You still want to aim for 0 parts per million since low levels are still toxic to fish health. Nitrate levels should be no higher than 20 ppm, with 10 ppm or less being better.

Water stability is essential to flowerhorn health. It is most important if you have a show quality fish, which are inbred and sensitive. Avoid sudden shifts in temperature or chemistry, even if the parameters stay in the safe zone.

Aquascaping a Flowerhorn Tank

You’ll have to choose aquascaping items with care when setting up a flowerhorn tank because these fish have ideas of their own. Large cichlids will shape their chosen territory. They uproot plants and dig pits in the gravel for potential spawning sites. The behavior causes problems if you aren’t prepared.

A digging flowerhorn will destabilize driftwood and rocks that are not well balanced. A sudden hardscape collapse could injure or kill your fish. The base of any rocks should be part way sunk into the gravel so that stones won’t shift on top of a digging cichlid.

You don’t want rocks to touch the glass either, as rocks will scratch or shatter glass on contact. Rocks like limestone and shale will raise the pH. Flowerhorns prefer hard water so that’s not an issue. Driftwood is too soft to harm aquarium glass and should be pressed through the gravel to be in full contact with the glass.

Live plants that grow attached to hard surfaces (epiphytes) are best. These plants don’t need a lot of light, compete with algae for nutrients, and have tough leaves. Good epiphytic aquarium plants include:

Java Fern
Anubias
African Water Fern
Java and Christmas Moss
Bucephalandra

Floating plants are flowerhorn safe. They provide shade as algae prevention. Shade deepens fish colors and provides a sense of safety

What Do Flowerhorn Cichlids Eat?

Feeding flowerhorn cichlids is an easy affair. They eat flakes when young and switch to pellets without fuss as they grow up. Since they are carnivorous their prepared food should have high quality protein as the main ingredients.

Flakes or pellets that contain too much starch or vegetable fillers should be avoided. Stick to fish meal, insect larvae, shrimp, and other ingredients. The best flowerhorn food formulas have color enhancers like astaxanthin and carotenoids added.

Supplement the diet of your flowerhorn fish with live, frozen, and pieces of fresh food. These items include missing nutrients, extra fat, and color enhancing molecules. Earthworms, raw shrimp, strips of lean fish, squid, krill, and insects are excellent treats. Don’t feed these too often as they will cloud your water and raise ammonia levels.

Young flowerhorn cichlids need to eat three times per day. Reduce feedings to twice per day once your fish reach 7 inches long and their growth rate slows down.

Flowerhorn Cichlid Tank Mates

Flowerhorn cichlids are kept alone in most cases. The fish are large, colorful, and not shy about swimming in the open. Their aggressive personality makes choosing tank mates hard as well.

A community tank with a flowerhorn cichlid is doable. You will need more space if your flowerhorn is full grown. Young fish are compatible with any fish species too large to be eaten and fast enough to avoid their territory. Large barbs, giant danios, mollies, silver dollars and plecostomus are good tank mates for young flowerhorns.

A full grown flowerhorn should be kept with other semi-aggressive to aggressive cichlids. These fish are all large as well so your aquarium should be 125 gallons in size or more. Compatible cichlids and other large fish include:

Oscar Fish
Jaguar and Wolf Cichlids
Red Devils
Jack Dempseys
Umbee Cichlids
Blue Texas Cichlids
Green Terrors
Red Terrors
Arowanas
Red Tail Catfish
Iridescent Shark
Silver Dollars
Bala Shark
Tinfoil Barbs
Rainbowfish
Plecostomus

Any ast swimming dither fish too big to be eaten is a potential tank mate. If your flowerhorns start to spawn, you should remove any tank mates. Adult cichlids will kill any fish they think threaten their eggs and fry.

Breeding Flowerhorn Cichlids

Flowerhorn breeding is not easy to do. They are large and aggressive so introducing a male and female has to be done with care. Most breeders will raise a group of 6-8 young fish together in a large aquarium. The flowerhorn cichlids will pair off on their own. Any mated pairs are then moved to separate breeding tanks. This approach is best as your fish will choose mates they prefer.

Another way to breed them is to introduce two adult fish. Adults may not like each other even if they are ready to spawn and will start fighting if they aren’t separated. Introduce two adult flowerhorns by using a fish tank divider or a large piece of egg crate cut to fit your aquarium dimensions.

The divider has to allow water flow so your flowerhorn fish smell each others’ hormones. The fish should be able to see each other and not have room to bite. After a month of living together, remove the divider and watch the fish for a few hours to ensure they don’t try to kill each other.

Separate a fighting pair fast and replace the divider for a few more days. A second or third attempt could achieve compatibility. If not then you need to find them different partners. Fin displays and lip locking is normal for a flowerhorn pair. Signs that the pair aren’t compatible include torn fins, missing scales, and one fish hiding or fleeing from the other.

Once you have a compatible flowerhorn pair they will soon develop eggs and start redecorating your aquarium. They prefer a hard, flat surface to lay their eggs on. A rock or broken flower pot are best.

Flowerhorn fish lay 500-2000 eggs per spawning. The male patrols the borders of the territory while the female fans the eggs, oxygenating them with her fins.

Spawning may still fail as many flowerhorn cichlids are infertile. They have been hybridized and inbred so much that some can’t have babies. If the eggs don’t hatch one or both of your fish are sterile.

In a successful spawning the fry will eat live brine shrimp nauplii 2 to 3 days after hatching. Feed them 3 times per day and graduate them to crushed flakes after 3 weeks of growth.

FAQs

What is the Cost of Flowerhorn Fish?

Flowerhorn cichlid prices range from $10-20 for a pet store “mutt” to thousands of dollars for show quality specimens.

Is Flowerhorn Fish Lucky?

East Asian cultures believe that flowerhorn fish are lucky. Their golden colors and flower spots mark them as symbols of good fortune. Banks, hotels, and restaurants often have flowerhorn fish tanks for prosperity. Golden Monkey flowerhorn cichlids are one of the luckiest breeds. They are one of the last luohan varieties, with vibrant gold and dark flower spots along their flanks.

Is Flowerhorn Fish Friendly?

Flowerhorn fish are not friendly. They are aggressive fish that will chase and bite tank mates who enter their chosen territory. Other aggressive cichlids will live alongside them if the tank has enough room for each fish to have its own turf. Any peaceful fish should be large and fast so they won’t be bullied.

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About Jason Roberts

Jason is an aquarium fanatic that has been a fish hobbyist for almost three decades.

Food and nutrition for aquarium fish

The diet of fish in natural waters is very diverse. So, bitterlings, platypetsilia, mollins, gourami living in an aquarium in nature eat mainly plant foods, haplohilus pick up insects falling on the water, and cichlids (angelfish and others) are predators. In the aquarium, all species receive the same common aquarium food, which is very limited.

A distinction is made between natural and artificial foods. Whenever possible, fish should be fed with natural food that fish eat in natural conditions. But, of course, we cannot give African food to African fish. We just select the right ones.

Bloodworms are the most common natural food. A bloodworm is a larva of non-biting mosquitoes of twitchers, or bells, which looks like a bright red, segmented worm from 0.5 to 2 centimeters long. These larvae are caught at the bottom of ponds, lakes and slowly flowing rivers. This is not an easy task, and besides, it is very dirty. Therefore, when bloodworms can be bought (it is sold in almost all zoological stores), you should not catch it yourself.

Bloodworm is an excellent food for all aquarium fish larger than 1.5 cm. You need to give it based on the calculation of one to five worms for each fish one to two times a day. You can not throw a lot of bloodworms into the aquarium at once. If the fish do not have time to eat it, then the bloodworm burrows into the sand, where it often dies and, rotting, spoils the water. Bloodworms can also be fed to fish fry from 6 to 7 millimeters in size. For them, the larvae have to be cut into tiny pieces. A bunch of bloodworms (20-30 pieces) is placed on the glass and the blades are cut with quick movements, turning into a mushy mass. Having tilted the glass, the blood is allowed to drain, after which the slurry is thrown into the aquarium. You need to be especially careful when feeding fish with cut bloodworms. If even a few uneaten pieces remain in the aquarium, rotting immediately begins and the water becomes cloudy. You can store the bloodworm in a clean, damp cloth, laying it in a thin layer and placing it in a cool place (preferably with a temperature of 2-5 degrees). Sometimes bloodworms are stored mixed with sleeping tea. In this case, he lives longer, but it is difficult to choose him when feeding. In the summer, it is convenient to store the larvae in a plate with water and a Riccia aquarium plant placed in a bright light.

There is another very good way to store bloodworms. If the larvae are laid out in a thin layer in a flat vessel with a tight-fitting lid and slightly sprinkled with water, then the so-called wet chamber will be obtained. The air there is saturated with water vapor, and there is a lot of oxygen. Larvae in such a chamber, installed in a cool place, live for a long time. There are other ways to store. Bloodworms can be prepared for future use by drying live larvae. Most fish eat dry bloodworm well, but when feeding, it is easy for them to muddy the water, and the fish do not grow fast enough. Better dry bloodworm frozen. Do not feed fish with dead, spoiled bloodworms.

Bloodworm is rare in the southern regions of Russia. But in very heavily polluted reservoirs, the surface of the silt is often, like a carpet, covered with many thin red worms, half buried in the silt. These worms sometimes multiply strongly in the aquarium, if it is poorly lit and kept untidy. This is a tubifex, or tubifix. This worm is a good food for fish. Store it in the same way as a bloodworm, or in a plate of water, changed twice a day. This method is the best, tubifex can live in such conditions for months. Before feeding, the worm is cut, otherwise it will immediately burrow into the sand.

Excellent food for fry and small adult fish: various swimming crustaceans and mainly cyclops and daphnia. They are small, translucent and move in the water with the rowing movements of their oar-antennae. Their size is often less than a millimeter, and they are indispensable when feeding juveniles.

The brought Cyclopes are placed in a basin, changing the water from time to time. To do this, the upper layers of water are filtered through a net, and the dead crustaceans that have settled to the bottom are thrown away. Too many cyclops should not be kept - they die when overcrowded and become unsuitable for feeding fish.

As many cyclops and daphnia should be allowed into the aquarium as the fish eat within 1 - 2 hours. Daphnia are also sold dry. But if you feed the fish with one dry food, they grow and reproduce poorly. When vitamin D is added to dried daphnia, growth and fertility are improved in fish. One or two drops of an oily solution of vitamin D or fish oil are added to a matchbox of dry daphnia.

Powdered dry daphnia are placed in a special plastic or foam feeder floating on the surface of the aquarium. Like bloodworms, cyclops and daphnia can be frozen for a long time.

Amphipod (Gammarus) is another dry food for aquarium fish. Live amphipods are tasty food for many commercial fish. It is not for nothing that even a winter fishing hook (mormyshka) is shaped like an amphipod, which is sometimes called a mormysh. When dried, the crustacean is quite hard. No aquarium fish can eat it whole. But if the crustaceans are ground into dust, the fish eat them very willingly. In terms of nutritional value, this food is better than dry daphnia, but, of course, it is inferior to live food. This food is suitable for many fish. It is good to feed the fish with dry food mixed with chopped bloodworms.

Corretra is also a live food for fish - a mosquito larva. The dimensions of the core are about a centimeter. Equal in nutritional value to the bloodworm, the coretra has some advantages in comparison with it: it does not burrow into the sand and is very insensitive to the amount of oxygen dissolved in water. In one glass, you can put several hundred correts. These larvae are very resistant to adverse conditions.

Coretra should be kept at low temperatures; in heat, it quickly pupates and becomes unsuitable for feeding. Fish accustomed to bloodworms are reluctant to catch a coretra, however, when they are hungry, they begin to eat it greedily.

Slipper ciliates are the best food for newly hatched fish larvae. It's quite easy to break it down. Take rotten parts of aquarium plants and squeeze them into a test tube.

When the turbidity settles, looking at the light, they catch with a pipette shoes, which are easy to recognize by their characteristic shape. The ciliates are placed in a jar (2-3 liters in volume) with cooled boiled water, adding two to three drops of milk or yeast diluted in water. The water temperature should be 20 - 25 degrees. After clarification of the water, the ciliates are again fed with milk or yeast. After 10 - 15 days, there are usually a lot of shoes in the bank.

Ciliates breed well if you throw a banana peel into a jar, fresh or dry - it doesn't matter. In this case, feeding with milk or yeast is not necessary. And pieces of banana peel can be placed every 10 to 15 days.

To feed the larvae, take 1 - 2 glasses of water with ciliates per day. In the jar, you immediately need to add cooled boiled or plain raw tap water and feed the ciliates. The more often you change the water, the better the shoes will multiply. One three-liter jar of shoes is usually enough to dig up a hundred fish larvae.

Large fish - crucian carp, goldfish, adult macropods, gourami and others - eat earthworms well.

Artificial aquarium food should only be used when natural food is not available. A good artificial food is raw meat or fresh fish. Meat and fish are scraped with a knife, separating the smallest pieces. A substitute for ciliates is a hard-boiled egg yolk. Having shaken it in a glass of water, the liquid is dripped with a pipette into the places of accumulation of fish larvae. The yolk greatly spoils the water, and therefore it can be used only in the absence of ciliates. Instead of the yolk, you can successfully use egg powder. By the way, they can occasionally feed unpretentious adult fish, throwing the powder into the feeder to the surface.

Steamed in boiling water and washed in a net, semolina, balls of white bread, biscuits can be used in very small quantities.

Whatever you feed your fish, you must first of all follow the basic rule: do not throw too much food into the aquarium. You need to feed once or twice a day, and immediately after the fish have eaten, the remaining food should be removed from the aquarium.

Often, leaving for a few days, they let in a full aquarium of cyclops or, even worse, give a lot of dry or artificial food. In such cases, they usually come "to the broken trough": the water has deteriorated, the fish have died.

The picture would be different if these days the fish were not fed at all: they would all survive, if only they lost a little weight.

Always throw food in the water and in the same place in the aquarium. In order for the fish to immediately find it, it is useful to develop a conditioned reflex in them to knock on glass or to the ringing of a bell. You should always knock or call just before feeding. Usually, even without special "training", hungry fish immediately gather to the glass where they are fed, as soon as they notice a person approaching the aquarium. In this case, "learning" happened against our will: feeding was always preceded by the appearance of a person near the aquarium.

How to feed guppies

Content:

Guppies are predominantly carnivores
Guppies feed in the upper layers of the water
Guppies have a bright color
Modern guppy breeds have long veil fins
Guppies - viviparous fish
To summarize

Guppies are one of the oldest and most popular aquarium inhabitants. Bright, unpretentious, viviparous fish, which even a novice aquarist can keep. However, in order for the fish to be bright, shiny, the fry to grow actively, and the water to be clear and safe for pets, they must be properly fed.

To select food for these fish, you need to take into account all their needs and characteristics.

Guppies are predominantly carnivores

This does not mean that they are dangerous to other inhabitants of the aquarium . In nature, they feed on small invertebrates. They eat mosquito larvae. This feature is even used to fight the malaria mosquito in problem regions, so the guppy is acclimatized in all countries. Accordingly feed for them should be rich in proteins of animal origin.

Guppies feed in the upper layers of the water

These fish have an upper mouth and are attracted to floating food. What falls to the bottom, they ignore. Accordingly, it is necessary to select food , which does not sink for a long time.

Guppies have a bright color

In nature, these fish are inconspicuous, but breeders have bred many colorful breeds. Like other fish, in order to maintain and enhance the color, they require an increased content of carotenoids in stern . These are pigments that are synthesized by plants and not produced by animals. They enhance reds, oranges and yellows.

Also, carotenoids have pronounced antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that improve the condition of the skin, give a pronounced shine.

Modern guppy breeds have long veiled fins

With improper feeding, lack of certain nutrients and vitamins, the fins are excised and acquire a characteristic frayed edge. They do not grow to their full length, and fin injuries take a long time to heal. contains enough animal protein, carotenoids, essential vitamins and minerals to keep fins looking healthy.

Guppies - viviparous fish

In aquarium , in addition to adults, fry are constantly growing. Accordingly, food should be such that both adult fish and babies can swallow it. It must also ensure the harmonious growth and development of fry.

To summarize

To meet the needs of guppies, food is needed with a high content of animal protein and carotenoids and small so that it can be eaten, including by fry floating on the surface for ease of eating.

These features and needs are taken into account in the Tetra Guppy line.