What Do Ornamental Fish Eat? Introduction to Common Types of Fish Food

Although ornamental fish come in a huge variety of species with quite different habits, their feeding habits can be broadly divided into three categories: carnivorous fish, omnivorous fish, and herbivorous fish. Let's take a look below at what ornamental fish eat!

Animal-based food

Animal-based food mainly consists of live food as well as fish meal, dried water fleas, meat meal, fish meat, egg yolk, Artemia nauplii, tubifex worms (nematodes), Artemia, rotifers, "infusoria water", yellow mealworm larvae, silkworm pupae, bloodworms, and so on.

Plant-based food

Plant-based food includes various algae, ground or processed cereals and legumes, and so on. For example, chlorella, spirulina, and duckweed are rich in protein and also contain a variety of vitamins and trace elements, making them supplementary food for freshwater ornamental fish.

Artificial food

Artificial food has the advantages of being convenient to use, nutritionally complete, and easy to store and feed. This type of food comes in granular, flake, and other forms, and there are also special foods designed specifically for the taste and nutritional requirements of certain ornamental fish. Artificial food not only contains a large amount of protein, but generally also has various beneficial live bacteria added to provide a healthy micro-ecological cycle, with good absorption and environmental benefits.

The main animal-based ingredients of artificial compound food are fish meal, blood meal, liver meal, dried mosquito larvae, dried tubifex worms, skimmed milk powder, yeast, and so on, while plant-based ingredients include wheat flour, cereal flour, spirulina, legume flour, and so on.

Artificial food for marine ornamental fish generally has iodine added to its ingredients, as well as seaweed, krill, Artemia, and some plankton. Floating food is suitable for feeding fish that forage at the surface. Adhesive food and tablet food are suitable for feeding bottom-dwelling ornamental fish such as catfish and loaches.

Homemade food

In actual fish keeping, food can be made at home, which can be supplied over the long term and can also be used in combination with live food alone. Homemade food can have vitamins or antibiotic medicines for disease prevention and treatment added to it, and it has many advantages. For example, the "beef heart burger" that discus fish love can be made at home; its main ingredients are beef heart, shrimp meat, vegetables, and multivitamins, which are ground up with a meat grinder and mixed together, then cut into pieces for feeding, and it can also be quickly frozen for short-term storage. Homemade foods like the "beef heart burger" have become the staple food of discus fish and similar species.

Generally, feed about 3% of the fish's body weight in food each day. It can also be estimated: the daily feeding amount for a one-year-old ornamental fish is roughly equal to the size of its head. The daily feeding amount for a two-year-old ornamental fish is about 1/2 the size of its head. For ornamental fish three years or older, their total daily food intake is about 1/3 the size of their head.