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Best food for my fish

Author: Yeo-Hoon Bae
 Last Updated: Dec 22, 2012

What is the best food for my fish?



First thing to realize is that variety is good. You don't need to buy 10 different brands and change every day but you should not feed the same food every day for a whole month either. You should buy more than one brand of food and experiment.
You should keep unused food vacuum sealed if possible.

The following article will point out some of the good options you can choose.

Flakes vs Pelletes


So which type of food is better? Flakes or pelletes?

The answer is rather easy - pelletes. Here are some of the reasons why you don't want to use flakes:

  • More surface area is bad. Through the surface area, the food looses their nutrition value more quickly, even when they are held in a container or a bag. Pelettes have more volume to surface area ratio.
  • Flakes break down more quickly in water. Some of the nutrients end up disolving in water instead of being injested by your fish.
  • Flakes tend to foul your water faster because they dissolve faster. Pelletes on the other hand, don't dissolve very quickly, hence you can remove uneaten food more easily as well.
  • You may not need to feed as much when pelletes are used. Once again, this is because less food are dissolved/disintegrated into water during feeding time.

    • Pelletes have disadvantages as well:

  • If the pelletes you use are smaller than the gaps in between your substrate grains, then they may fall beyond the reach of your fish. Obviously this will partially dissolve into water, but more serously, they will rot. Not good. A way around to this is to get pelletes that sinks either more slowly or floating types. Alternatively, you can change your substrate to either a fine gravel type or a sand.

    • So which brand pelletes should I purchase?


    I recommend these three brands - New Life Spectrum, Omega One, and Hikari. And here are the specific recommendations depending on your needs:

    For tiny/small fish: this is a very small sized pelletes for small fish. It's good for very small fish up to Guppies and Platies. Also recommended for juverniles.


    • For small/medium size fish: these are still small sized pelletes good for small to medium sized fish.


    • For medium/large size fish: these are good for bigger than community-sized fish.


    • For large size fish: these are quite big. You should make sure your fish mouth is big enough to take this relatively big pelletes.



    • Any other recommendations?


    Pelletes are good staple food that you can feed them often but you will still need to add some more variety, especially depending on the type of fish you raise.

    Here are some additional options if you are looking for more variety (which is a good thing!):

    Algae/Veggie Wafers: just about all species benefit from these vegetarian food. Some species require vegetarian food. The following are good choices, which come in little wafers form:


    • Blood Worms: Don't feed these if you raise species that are only supposed to live on veggie food. Some of these species include mbuna and some species of pleco. If they eat too much meat food, their intestine will block, ultimately killing them. But most of the community species will benefit from this food. Here's some good examples:




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