How To Choose The Right Food For Your Aquarium
Nutrition is vital to ensure that the denizens of your aquarium, so choosing the right food is important to ensure all of your fish eat the right amount.
Making the best choice of aquarium fish food is as vital as ensuring your fish are in the most ideal environment to thrive with plants and live rocks that can help create the perfect living conditions for your fish.
There are a lot of choices when it comes to fish food and they can sometimes be overwhelming, so here is a guide to the kinds of food fish will eat and the different factors that affect this.
What Can Fish Eat?
Different fish species, much like other animals, have specific types of food they can and cannot eat, and can be divided into the same three groups as most other animals:
- Carnivores – Meat eaters who prefer insects, shrimp and other smaller undersea life.
- Herbivores – Vegetable eaters who prefer to chomp on aquarium plants, algae, spirulina and other greens.
- Omnivores – Fish that are happy with both types of food.
Whether your fish eat meat is not the only factor that can determine the right type of food, however. Part of the reason there are so many different types of fish food is that they have different floatation properties that suit different kinds of fish.
In the tank, some fish prefer to be at the top, some at the bottom and some find a home in the middle, and these can affect the texture of food they like to eat.
Fish flakes, by far the most popular of all fish food, stay near the top, whilst fish food sticks or pellets tend to sink quickly, making them best for fish at the bottom of the tank.
How Much Should Your Fish Eat?
A common concern amongst most fish owners is the worry that they are underfeeding their fish when in most cases the opposite is true.
Fish do not tend to eat a lot of food, and have quite small stomachs, so a good rule of thumb is the five-minute rule; once you feed your fish, if there is any food left after five minutes, you are overfeeding them.
The only exceptions to this are greens, which tend to be nibbled on throughout the day as in nature, and nocturnal feeders, who would eat overnight.
Types Of Fish Food
There are many different types of fish food that are specially formulated for the different kinds of fish noted above. Here are the most popular types and their uses:
- Flakes – The most popular and easy to find fish food, these baked flakes are very popular amongst several fish species. They tend to be best for top and mid-water fish, although any remainder will be eaten by the bottom fish.
- Sticks/Tablets – These are made in a similar way to flakes, but instead of floating tend to sink to the bottom of the tank quickly, making them ideal for bottom-dwelling fish. Some types will float on the top of the tank.
- Wafers – An ideal choice for a mixed tank, wafers made from algae tend to be quite solid and thus are perfect for bottom feeders.
- Food Blocks – A variant food that slowly releases food over a long time, these are used when an owner is away from their tank for a while.