Looking for something other than flakes...

Okay. Here is what is in my tank:

3 balloon mollies
2 guppies
1 dwarf gourami
3 otos


I feed my little doll faces TetraMin Tropical Crisps every day.
I also feed them 1 algae wafer maybe twice a week. EVERYONE eats it, mostly the mollies. I've never seen the otos eat them at all!
I also feed them a cucumber slice maybe once a week.

I want to come up with a good regime for them. I know most of you do a fast day... but I know that bettas get consitpated pretty easily.

What are the suggestions? I have no experience with blood worms or anything, so if you suggest something, maybe send a link ??? so I don't get the wrong thing?

THANKS!!!! Seacrest, OUT!

 

Amnagrla,

I don't have fish, I have 2 african dwarf frogs, but I love frozen bloodworms. I copied this from GardenWeb @ivillage in the Aquarium section: "I have two bettas and twice a week I feed frozen blood worms without any waste. What I do is take a cube place it on a paper plate use a meat cutting knife and cut off a little piece then return the cube to the freezer for next time neverletting it thaw out keep frozen . It is not hard to cut with a good knife. Only feed a betta eye ball size of blood worms to the fish otherwise you will constipate them and blow up their stomach. A bettas stomach is the size of their eye. I prefer using frozen foods by Hakiri."

I know they are sold in frozen cubes and flat packs--basically a ziploc bag full of bloodworms. I like the flat packs, because I don't need a whole cube and the less I have to touch them the better. Before I open my package, I hit the frozen package a few times with a meat tenderizer hammer to break it into little pieces that way all I have to do is open the package, let a piece fall out and seal it back up. No touching. I defrost mine in the smallest size Dixie cups with very little warm water. Then I scoop them out with a toothpick and drop them into the tank. Cone feeders work great for fish, but not for my frogs. I had been advised not to let the defrosted water/worm liquid get into the tank, so I don't. I also have a jar of freeze dried bloodworms, but when you take them out, they just look like a lot of worm casings and no substance. I have heard that people with dust allergies should limit or not use the freeze dried type because they are more prone to develop an allergy to bloodworms. Literally food for thought!!!
I know our LFS likes blackworms too, but they only sell them fresh.

Either way you go it sounds like you already give your fish a nice variety! GOOD LUCK!

-M

 

I also feed a veggie flake made by Omega one, so they get their vitamin C shrimp pellets are good. I don't know I think I have one of everything on the Omega One shelf and they get a bit of it all down through the week.
Carol

 

Actually, all fish would do well to fast periodically. The fasting is less for constipation (that's what a pea now and then is for), and more for overall health. In the wild, fish are not guaranteed a continuous source of food, unless they're a small algae eater (like an oto). By having them fast now and then, we're mimicking their natural eating habits. It helps keep them from becoming overweight and developing a fatty liver.

My fish love ground up zucchini. My otos like spinach leaves.

 

We just today got for our livebearers. If you get bloodworms, i'd get the frozen cubes like . we use them to reduce the constipation threat (especially to Sora our finicky betta and the wild bettas).

 

Oh, and my mollies loooove freeze-dried tubifex worms (as a treat).

They're also totally nuts about HikarI algae wafers. And I mean totally nuts. They'll just dart to my hand as soon as I as much as hold a wafer up in the air in front of their tank.

And I also give them algae sheet. They sell them for fish too (not just for human consumption with sushI I mean).

I also like to give them crushed peas and slow sinking protein or vegetable pellets (they like to chase it round in the current).

Spinach is an awesome idea.

 

I chickened out... I bought freeze dried blood worms... maybe next time I'll get the froozen ones..

I also got freeze dried brine shrimp.

 

Actually, between us girls, I have to tell you, Amanda, I wasn't too freaked out by the frozen bloodworms. Sometimes they get stuck between my nails and it's not been that yukky. I just go and rinse it out. Nothing like major eeeeeeeeeeeek factor. For me anyway.

 

lol thank you!! this is what I needed to hear!!

 

I get the freeze dried bloodworms as well. As it is, those kind of gross me out (I don't know why!), I don't think I'd handle the frozen ones very well!

 

I'll tell you what's gross. Today, we found a molly fry (we have 10000000 in the tank right now) dead (and rotting, yak). He was stuck between the glass and the back of the filter. I nearly puked.

 

I'll tell you what's gross. Today, we found a molly fry (we have 10000000 in the tank right now) dead (and rotting, yak). He was stuck between the glass and the back of the filter. I nearly puked.

:'( poor little girl.

as far as the bloodworms go - the freeze-dried bloodworms can affect people with an allergic reaction of itching and scratching. It did for both of us, but I've not had any reaction to contact with the frozen bloodworms.. and either way you can use tweezers (find rounded tip ones if you can) to drop a bloodworm into the tank.

 

Oooooh clever idea, the tweezers. Would be less gross definitely.

Am super allergic when I put my mind to it, but I luckily seem to be fine with the worms.

 

i'm not usually allergic, but just a little contact with those freeze-dried worms and I can't stop itching. crazy.

 

lol the container I bought has a little opening for me to just dump a little at a time in the tank. it's awesome, I don't have to touch them at all.

The freeze dried brine shrimp though... came in BIG chunks.... yuck.. like sawdust.

 

We've got this really cool basket thing that my betta totally worked out. He gets the food from the top, not the sides! Clever boy!

 

I have had great service in the past with this site. I'm not crazy about most of the flake foods because of the fish meal, but their sticks offer variety with ingredients like earthworms, plankton, etc. It would offer more choices.

kens fish

 

lol the container I bought has a little opening for me to just dump a little at a time in the tank. it's awesome, I don't have to touch them at all.

The freeze dried brine shrimp though... came in BIG chunks.... yuck.. like sawdust.

yea, we have a couple like that, but still give the food by hand so we can space out pieces and not put extra in on accident.

 

I'm not crazy about most of the flake foods because of the fish meal,
kens fish

What is the matter with fish meal?

 

Fishmeal doesn't hurt the fish, but it's basically non-nutritional, and is in the food to hold it together, so you have something that takes up space in your food instead of something nutritional. Your better fish foods will not show fish meal as a first ingredient. Omega One doesn't contain any fishmeal.

 

hmm.... okay. I noticed in my HikarI First Bites (for my guppy fry) list fish meal as the first ingredient... is that bad?

 

From the sound of it, it's not so much that it's bad, it's that it's not good. It's similar to something where the first ingredient is sugar, or enriched flour, or gelatin. It's either empty calories or just nothing.

 

blood worms ...algea disks for the otto

 

I found hikarI first bites to be a bit of a rip off. It's great marketing as they say whether it's for egg layers or livebearers, but really, my livebearer fry eats off adult flakes, and my egg layer fry just seems to be able to survive off scraps and fresh veggies (otos, am sure meat eater fry would need more specific food).

 

we bought hikarI first bites for the mahachaI betta fry and they didn't really care for it.

 

lol I lost the little packet anyways!! hahaha

I was going to give boyfriend's little sisters some for the fry I gave them but I just crushed up some freeze dried brine shrimp and some tropical flakes for them.

 

yea, that works just as well.. a variety of good foods for them crushed to powder with a rolling pin is what we feed livebearer fry.. although being stomachs with fins, they'd eat about anything that dropped in.

 

Yep. I certainly quickly lost patience with crushing flakes for fry myself. But then again, the fry food (powder) is a bit of a rip-off I find. My fry at least seem OK just biting chunks off the bigger flakes.

 

Yep. I certainly quickly lost patience with crushing flakes for fry myself. But then again, the fry food (powder) is a bit of a rip-off I find. My fry at least seem OK just biting chunks off the bigger flakes.

I found the easy way to make your own powder is to put in whatever food you want in a sandwich bag and fold it over. Then crush it into powder with a rolling pin and pour the powder into a little sealable container.