What do you feed?

What does everyone feed their cichlids? What kind of cichlid? What is your feeding schedule. Has anyone had awesome results with a particular food?

Myself I am feeding my oscars and dovii a rotation diet consisting of goldfish,silversides, bloodworms, tubifix worms, brine shrimp and Hikari med/lg pellets. I feed every other day to combat bloat and keep them agressive. I have found blood worms seem to be the favorite, except for the Dovii... his preference is the goldfish.

Chiisai wrote: What does everyone feed their cichlids? What kind of cichlid? What is your feeding schedule. Has anyone had awesome results with a particular food?

 Myself I am feeding my oscars and dovii a rotation diet consisting of goldfish,silversides, bloodworms, tubifix worms, brine shrimp and Hikari med/lg pellets. I feed every other day to combat bloat and keep them agressive. I have found blood worms seem to be the favorite, except for the Dovii... his preference is the goldfish.

Let me start by saying, if I were you I would stop the gold fish feeding.  Gold fish are nothing but disease carrying disgust with absolutely no nutritional value.  The silver sides also have no nutritional value.  You will get most if not all of nutritional needs from pellets.  

I use to feed a lot of Hikari but I have stayed away from them for the last year or so.  Their product carries to much ash IMO, and their ingredients dont look nearly as nutritional as other brands.  I have used exclusively the past year or so NLS, Xtreame, Omega1.  Now that I am a sponsor for Southern Delight I am finishing off the other foods while feeding my main staple of Southern Delight.  I also mad my own food, I feed once every couple weeks.

I also treat them to freeze dried Mysis shrimp and Superba Krill on occasion.  

My Cichlids consist of about 50 different species.  I feed most of my fish once per day, my fry and grow outs sometimes twice/day.  

IMO Chiisai, I would stay away from all the fancy things and get a good staple pellet and feed that exclusively, with an occasional treat of bloodworms, and brine shrimp.

When I was housing WC monster fish I had a QT tank/ feeder fish health tank where I would house up to 70 gold fish. These fish got fed yummy protein enriched diet. The BASS, PIKE and DATS that I was converting fed fat on these feeder fish. Fish like Festae, Jags, and Snooks converted easily but loved the hunt when live foods where introduced.

I mainly fed and converted monster fish to Massivor Pellets. I have always had great growth from this product .

My cichlids currently do a mix of nls( new life spectrum) pellets, aqueon pellets,mysis shrimp , and frozen krill about twice a week. I feed my fish once a day and my growouts/ fry about 2-3 times a day. I will be trying the southern delight food soon. I plan to order some in the next few weeks when my current food starts to run low.....

Side note, I use hikari when I have it, but haven't bought it in a long while( not because I dislike it, but because I like the other two pellets better)

I also don't feed any of my cichlids live food as I have found that they can be kept in mixed cichlid tanks easier when they don't have the urge to kill everything....

I see what your saying Madness but my Dovii wont seem to eat pellets at all. He will eat bloodworms(though he eats the cubes whole). but thats only if they are falling. once they hit the tank bottom... he wont eat em. I think he just wont eat anything he cant hunt. I have heard that goldfish are not very nutrionally balanced. But then again I have also read that is because breeders feed them cheep food just to get them to the wholesaler. I have read that filling them with tubifix and the like makes them more nutrional. As far as disease goes... I have a feeder fish tank that some of the ugly guppies/goldfish ect go into that I keep everything in for ateast a week till I feed. it. Unless you can suggest a better feeder fish.. pellets just wont work.

I would try withholding food for a few days, than your Dovii will be more tempted to try the pellets.... Your Dovii can go quite a few days without eating, and from what I've experienced over the last 20 years or so is that fish can be stubborn, but if push comes to shove, they would rather eat pellets and live than die. ( unless they are diseased or sick).   I have a wild caught Dovii that eats pellets no problem, then again, I've never offered him anything else.

Good luck!

Chiisai wrote:I see what your saying Madness but my Dovii wont seem to eat pellets at all. He will eat bloodworms(though he eats the cubes whole). but thats only if they are falling. once they hit the tank bottom... he wont eat em. I think he just wont eat anything he cant hunt. I have heard that goldfish are not very nutrionally balanced. But then again I have also read that is because breeders feed them cheep food just to get them to the wholesaler. I have read that filling them with tubifix and the like makes them more nutrional. As far as disease goes... I have a feeder fish tank that some of the ugly guppies/goldfish ect go into that I keep everything in for ateast a week till I feed. it. Unless you can suggest a better feeder fish.. pellets just wont work.

Feed him large floating pellets, dont feed him anything that sinks. He will eventually eat pellets. Like Lloyd stated they can go for awhile without eating. Even though you feed your feeders better food, they still arent nutritional, and also quarantining the feeders for a week does nothing, you need to be quarantining/medication feeding A+ food, for almost a month to insure they are healthy.

I would stick to your guns and feed floaters and he will eventually eat them. Maybe not while you are watching but the floaters will disappear.

I feed my Lake Victorian African cichlids a mixture of kensfish.com brand flake foods and pellets/wafers. They also get all my culls of guppies and shrimp, the latter of which they enjoy the most! I also throw floating plants in there for them to eat on if they're bored; the plants grow faster than they can eat them though lol

CrazedAce wrote:I feed my Lake Victorian African cichlids a mixture of kensfish.com brand flake foods and pellets/wafers. They also get all my culls of guppies and shrimp, the latter of which they enjoy the most! I also throw floating plants in there for them to eat on if they're bored; the plants grow faster than they can eat them though lol

Wow just looked up the kensfish.com food. I am very impressed with the ingredient list. Most flake/pellet food I find on the market is honestly pure garbage. His flake food althought not ideal IMO is alot better then the stuff I find in fish stores and at considerably lower cost (last food I bought was Omega-1 @21.99 for 5.6oz.)

Madness I would be interested in trying that southern delight food, though their own website seems kinda poorly made. When I click on a selected food it just dumps me onto a popup filled advertising page.

I can get you the info if you want to buy. I will be at the swap meet handing out free samples.

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I want some free samples! What would be best for Africans? Seems like that brand enjoys putting krill into their foods. lol

CrazedAce wrote:I want some free samples! What would be best for Africans? Seems like that brand enjoys putting krill into their foods. lol

I would assume that all of their food is great for Africans, (I can get more info) and the only food with krill in it is the krill food, none of their staple has krill as an ingredient.

lloyd378 wrote:My cichlids currently do a mix of nls( new life spectrum) pellets, aqueon pellets,mysis shrimp , and frozen krill about twice a week.

I am curiuous... how do you feed your larger fish the mysis shirmp and krill? Other then feeding them whole frozen blocks they always seem too small for my larger cichlid fish to even bother with. My Oscars for instance just swim though blood worms that have been thawed out and then the Pleco comes through and gobbles em up lol.

I use freeze dried superba Krill for my large Cichs, and as for the Mysis my fish eat it and swallow before it spreads into a thousand little ones.

I always wondered how difficult it would be to create/market/ and sell a fish food of my own. Seems like unlike many other foods(dog,cat,ect) there just isnt a big demand for higher quality fish food. Perphaps this is the result of too many consumers who just want a few pretty fish for the lil ones and dont care what they eat. Here are the criteria I would love to see a fish food have...

#1 Absence of toxic, potentially toxic, and controversial ingredients

#2 Aquatic Animal protein and Preferred Plant Proteins as the primary protein sources, comprising at least 80% of the food

#3 Limited use of grains, binders, and fillers, aka non-preferred protein sources, comprising a maximum of 20% of the food.(use seaweed instead?)

#4 A fully nutritious food to include necessary vitamins and minerals with natural sources preferred.

#5 Use of "Whole Aquatic Animal Meal" or "Whole Aquatic Animal" in sufficient quantity. As the term "fish meal" could just mean the undesirable parts of fish leftover.

Anyone know a food manufacturer that would be open to suggestions? Or know how to sufficiently process ingredients into flake/pellets?