Best Aquarium Fish Food: What to Feed Your Fish!

Today, we’re going to look at the best aquarium fish food. The purpose of this blog is to give you everything you need to know about fish food. We will cover the types of food we feed our fish and the reasons behind our choices. So, stay tuned.

Introduction to Fish Food

Alright, so here’s what we’ll do. This is actually going to be a two-part blog series. In this blog, we’ll talk about the types of food that we feed and why we feed it. In a future blog, we’ll take you around the fish room and show you how we feed the fish because there are some important things we can learn from that as well.

How This Blog is Organized

So, the way this blog is organized: as I go through the foods, a number will pop up on the screen. That number will correlate to a link in the description below. So, if you’re looking for fish food or you want to try something different, you can click on that link, and it’ll bring you to the food that we’re talking about. I hope that will make things easier for you.

Types of Fish Food We’ll Cover

Alright, the way the blog is organized, we’ll first look at the processed prepared foods. Then, we’ll look at some freeze-dried foods, some specialty prepared foods, frozen foods, and finally, the live foods that we feed. Hopefully, that will give you everything you need to know to get started in keeping your fish healthy and properly fed.

Why We Choose Certain Foods

Alright, before we get into the specific foods, I want to talk a little bit about why we choose to feed the fish the foods that we feed.

Key Considerations When Choosing Fish Food

The first thing: Will your fish eat the food? We see this all the time. I see it a lot in comment sections and in forums. “Oh, my fish won’t eat this food. How do I get them to eat it?” My answer would be: don’t stress about that. Feed the foods that your fish will eat, and don’t worry about the things they won’t eat. So, to me, that is one of the most important things. If your fish won’t eat it, it doesn’t really matter what you’re feeding.

“For example, if you’re feeding a flake food that costs $10 per pound and the fish eat it up, they’re healthy, they have great color, and they live a long time. But if you switch to a food that costs $30 per pound and the fish don’t eat it, that can be harmful. Not only is the food going uneaten, but it’s sinking to the bottom, decaying, and raising your nitrate levels.” So, the number one thing for us when choosing foods is: will the fish eat the food?

The second thing: What is it doing to water parameters? For instance, if the food is sinking too fast and getting into the gravel and just sitting there rotting, that’s not going to be good for us. We want foods that are going to stay in the tank and stay together for a relatively long time, giving the fish an opportunity to eat that food. But we don’t want it clouding up the water or fouling it up, making us do extra water changes and creating a lot of extra work for us.

The next thing: Are the fish healthy? That’s super important. It is important that the fish eat the food and that it does not negatively affect the water quality. But if the fish are not healthy, then what’s the point of feeding that food? “When observing our fish room, most of the fish appear to be thriving, with fish loss being relatively rare. Fish death in our fish room is a relatively rare occurrence, and I believe that reflects the quality of the foods we feed. We want to see good color, active fish, and fish that are breeding. If those things are happening, it’s a decent indication that the foods you’re feeding are probably correct.”

Obviously, cost is part of this equation. So, I’ve mentioned this already: Why feed a food that costs $30 per pound when the food you’re currently feeding at $10 per pound works well?

Another thing we want to look at: What are the ingredients of the food? That’s important. So, if you look at the ingredients list and it’s mostly cornmeal, that might not be great for fish. But we want to be looking at the ingredients list and hopefully see fish meal, krill, shrimp, or some type of protein-based, fish-based food as some of the first ingredients. That’s something we want to address as well as we look for the fish foods that we feed our fish.

The Importance of Variety in Fish Food

Now, one thing to keep in mind, and I hope this becomes clear in the blog, is variety. We feed our fish a variety of foods. So, you may say, “Well, I really don’t like that one type of food,” or “I can’t believe you’re feeding your fish that.” Keep in mind, we have a lot of different foods that we feed, and variety for us is very important—not only because you get different nutrients sometimes with the different brands but also because we have different types of fish in our fish room. In the same tank, if it’s a community tank, we have to make sure we’re meeting the dietary requirements of all the fish in that ecosystem.

How Often Do We Feed?

Alright, so as we’re talking about foods—and we’ll address this more in the next blog, Part 2—how often do we feed? I’m a big believer in smaller feedings more frequently, to a certain extent. For us, we feed our fish twice a day, in the morning and at night, smaller volumes of food. I think that goes a long way in managing their health and keeping the water parameters in check, so we’re not doing a massive feed and creating a lot of waste and debris.

Managing Aggression Through Feeding

The other thing that it does—and this sometimes gets overlooked, but it’s super important, especially for us because we keep a lot of cichlids—is managing aggression. I’ve shown you the 125 before. We’ve got the Oscar and that tilapia in there. Those fish— “The Oscar is around 12 inches long, and the tilapia is nearly 17 inches. Despite their size, they don’t eat the fry in the tank. Why? Because we feed them smaller meals more frequently. They’re full. They’re content. They don’t want to waste the energy chasing around other fish trying to eat them. So, when you feed smaller meals more frequently, I think that reduces fish aggression.”

What We Feed Our Fish

Alright. So now let’s take a look at what we feed. And again, I know that people have their favorites, and I’m not telling you that if we don’t feed your fish food, it’s not a great food. But I’m telling you what we feed our fish and what we’ve had good luck with, trying to balance all of those different requirements when it comes to cost, ingredients, fish health, whether they’ll eat it, and all the different types of fish that we have. And so, this is what’s worked well for us.

Processed Prepared Foods

Tetramin Flakes: The first thing that we feed is usually the Tetramin flakes. I know it’s relatively simple and not super expensive. This is a can that we’ve had for a long time. This is actually a refill can that we use, believe it or not, in our fish room because we have so many tanks—about 60 right now. A can this size lasts us just a few days. So, we don’t really buy it in this size, but this is a great fish food for us.

Freeze-Dried Foods

Freeze-Dried Glass Shrimp: The next thing we do is feed a fair amount of freeze-dried foods. Here, we have a giant bag of freeze-dried glass shrimp. This is from Gemco, and it comes in a 1-pound package. So again, this is something that we feed out once every couple of days to our larger fish.

Frozen Foods

Frozen Blood Worms: Now, let’s take a look at some of the frozen foods that we use. Here is a package of frozen blood worms, and we buy these in 250-gram packs. I’ll put the link in the description.

Live Foods

Live Baby Brine Shrimp: Now, when it comes to live foods, there are many options. The big thing for us is live baby brine shrimp. We use live baby brine shrimp, which comes in small bottles. Live baby brine shrimp is awesome. It is one of the greatest foods you can feed fry.

Conclusion

I hope you found this information helpful and that you can build upon it in your own fish-keeping practices. Again, the links are in the description below. If you want to check this stuff out, I would love to hear from you in the comments. What are you feeding your fish? What’s working for you? What’s not? Again, the comments section is a place where we can learn from one another. I’ve just got my stuff that I feed. Maybe you’ve got some awesome things that you’ve had really good luck with.