What do goldfish eat? Common foods and feeding methods

Goldfish are omnivorous animals, but keeping goldfish also requires feeding the right food at the right time to ensure normal growth and development. Fish are the most numerous group of vertebrates, and among existing species they can be divided into four major categories according to diet: herbivorous, carnivorous, omnivorous and detritivorous. Goldfish are omnivorous; algae, aquatic plants, insects, duckweed, earthworms, chopped fish and shrimp and animal offal in the water are all food for goldfish. Below we introduce goldfish food according to the three growth stages of goldfish.

Fry stage

Goldfish are oviparous animals. Just after hatching from the egg, the fry cannot eat food; they have a large yolk sac on the belly, and during the 2 to 3 days after hatching they survive on the nutrients in the yolk sac. When the nutrients in the yolk sac are exhausted, the goldfish fry have to obtain food from the external environment, and this begins the feeding activity of the goldfish's life.

Fry differ from adult goldfish: because they do not have mature digestive organs, they need to eat relatively small plankton, such as rotifers and paramecia. Slightly larger fry can be fed red worms, such as cladocerans and copepods, and so on. Under artificial rearing, crushed egg yolk from chicken or duck eggs can also be used as a substitute. Feeding during the fry stage directly affects whether superior goldfish seedlings can be obtained in the future.

Young fish stage

Slightly larger goldfish can be fed animal-based foods such as water fleas, jumping water fleas, earthworms (aquatic earthworms), snail meat, shrimp meat or minced offal of other animals. Plant-based foods include planktonic algae (golden algae, yellow-green algae, green algae, dinoflagellates, diatoms and blue-green algae); when these algae gather into clumps, they can be caught and eaten by goldfish. Vegetable foods include spinach, Chinese cabbage and lettuce leaves, diced carrot, diced sweet potato, and so on. Generally, feeding is more effective when the goldfish are hungry, and vegetables should be guaranteed free of pesticide contamination to avoid poisoning.

Sub-adult and adult stage

At this stage we can mainly use artificial compound feed, with animal protein content above 40% (fish meal, silkworm pupa meal, etc.), soybean meal powder 20%, cornmeal 10%, flour and wheat bran 30%, plus some trace elements. Nutritionally, this can basically meet the needs of goldfish over 5 cm.

Precautions

Although the goldfish is an omnivorous fish fully domesticated by humans, whether food choices are reasonable still has an influence, and whether the food is correct can affect goldfish growth and development, colour, depth of brightness, plumpness and reproduction, among other issues.

Goldfish feed generally includes fish worms (water fleas), cyclops (green hoppers), paramecia (infusoria water), mosquito larvae (larvae of mosquitoes), aquatic earthworms, and so on. Artificial feed can also be eaten, but it is simply not the best choice. Plant foods can also be eaten by goldfish, for example duckweed, aquatic plants and other tender-leaf plants.