preferred food

[jesse goodwin]

I was going to ask which food you guys prefer. Altum you said New
Life Spectrum
Is there one variety that would be good for Dwarf Cichlids, tetras
and Otos or do I need a few? I do supplement with freeze dried
tubiflex and blood worms and even peas which I thought was for the
algae eaters but the tetras like them best.

Also do you always quarentine new fish and if so for how long?

[NetMax]

re: food:
In the wild, there's lots of bugs in the diet (roughage), predation
(meats such as turkey or stuff from the fish dept of your grocery
store) and vegetation (fresh produce), so start by researching if your
fish are carnivorous, herbivorous or insectivorous (is that last one a
real word?). Avoid excess fats (probably doesn't exist much in
nature), so go easy on the red wigglers, and go heavy on the fibre.

Staple food was supposed to be all those things, but it loses al lot
in the processing, so it's not viewed favourably. Mix it up (flakes &
size-appropriate pellets) and alternate with fresh & the variety of
frozen foods available (bloodworms, shrimp, beefheart etc).

re: quarantine:
Between 2 and 12 weeks, depending on circumstances (such as knowing
where they originated, their age, their condition, amount & conditions
of travel, their fragility etc) and the value of the stock being
protected.

Generally middle-age larger fish travel better. Small fish usually
travel poorly, young are extremely susceptible, and certain species
don't travel well at all. Travel and dissimilar water parameters are
the main causes of stress, which allows contagions to take hold of the
weakened fish, using it as a host to launch the attack on the other
fish. Even a 12 week quarantine will not screen for everything (ie:
diseases where the fish is a carrier until stressed), but it will get
them through the stress of travel, water parameters and allow
sufficient time to make a good assessment of the chances of unseen
internal pathogens.

NetMax

[Altum]

Yep, I like New Life Spectrum, and the smallest pellets or flakes
should suit the dwarf cichlids and tetras. Otos have never eaten much
in the way of prepared food for me. I have seen them eat Hikari algae
wafers or cucumbers when they are half-starved for lack of algae, but
they do best with in a planted tank where they can graze.

I feed frozen bloodworms and daphnia, the Hikari bio-pure ones. I
found frozen rotifers once but they were not sterilized and I think
they were the source of the dragonfly larvae in my guppy tank.
Carnivorous bugs in the tank when you're trying to breed guppies is
not a good thing. Tubifex grow in sewage and while freeze drying
probably kills the bacteria in the, I've never been comfortable with
them. Peas are great if your fish like them.

I don't quarantine otos. They are too fragile and there is no algae
in the quarantine. Most otos are wild-caught and if they die it's
becasue they were over-treated with cyanide. More often than not I
get fish from other hobbyists because we have some fish breeders in
town and if that's the case I don't bother quaranting. I quarantine
store fish for a month usually and I add salt at 1 tsp/gallon to a
quarantine tank.

--Altum

[pH7, Aquarium Ninja]

Thanks for all the pointers and tips. I don't like tubifex for the same
reason.

pH7, Aquarium Ninja

[Altum]

Also Omega One is a good brand of food. My loaches really relished
the shrimp pellets. For algae eaters, Hikari wafers have some
questionnable ingredients but plecos eat them pretty readily.

--Altum