Best Food Duboisi Cichlid

Best Foods:

1. What they are eating now and thriving on.

2. Pellet Foods - New Life Spectrum 1mm Cichlid Formula, Hikari Cichlid Excel - mini pellet, Dainichi Veggie Delux, or Dainichi Veggie FX - baby pellet. All other pellet foods in my opinion is suspect. There are a lot of other foods out there that are having success with increased size, but the color is severly diminished. Lots of people are also trying high-end Koi pellets and having good results.

3. Flake Foods - Any flake food with a high vegtable protein content, ones with spirulina are best. I use Aqurian Tropical Flakes with lots of success.

4. Fresh Foods - Fresh veggies such as romaine lettuce, seaweed, frozen peas unslated, and parched zuchini. Prep the food just as if you were going to eat it yourself.

5. Live/Frozen foods - Mysis Shrimp, fresh whole shrimp, and other crusteans that still have a harder shell no slimy shell like brine. Lots of people feed brine, but I shy away from that. because its slimy. I would not feed live/frozen as a daily staple, but no harm in 1-3 times a week as a treat.

With any change in Tropheus Diet, ALWAYS TAKE IT EASY at first. Blend in over a two week period if your changing their daily staple. If adding live/frozen foods take it even more easy and wait to see their response to it first.

Pellet foods are more nutrious thus require less intake which makes for less feeding. The pellet if floating will not generally get into filters, and the sinking pellets typically if they make it to the bottom, stay on bottom till eaten.

Flake foods can be more messy, but generally always do best as a first food on any arriving fish. So, in my opinion it is always best to start out on flake, then move onto pellets.

The other foods I generally stay away from because they are really messy, and hasslesome to prepare. And if your not comfortable, than can lead to problems.

Hope this helps..

Geoff

Thanks Ray..

I completely agree that Tropheus are a lot more agressive eaters and can handle so much more. The key is getting them acclimated to aquarium enviroments and prepared foods.

In aquaria the stresses are higher because of agression and nitrate levels, so you just got to use those foods that would be oppurtunistic in the wild, in lower amounts in the aquarium.

I would recomend to anyone, that when first getting the fish, always feed for about the first 2-weeks the same food the shipper was feeding. This way you know for certain if there is a issue with them not eating, then its not because of the food your trying to get them to eat.

Then over like the next 2-weeks, blend in the food you are wanting to feed until you 100% on the new food.

With live or Frozen, take it easy until your comfortable with what your doing and see the fish are as well. I still dont think it should be a daily staple, but definately no problem with several times a week.

Take care,

Geoff

Hi,

We, in Indonesia, have no luxury of finding varieties of food. Is it ok to feed Tropheus with Tetra Bit (the most economical) and Tetra Vegetable (quite expensive, twice of TetraBit). I haven't been able to find spirulina for chiclids. there is spirulina for Koi, but I'm not sure with the content.

the breeders here use frozen bloodworm to feed the parents & the fries. they're just gambling with the casualties.

look forward to getting some advices.

PS: This is my first time keeping Tropheus, in fact the 1st batch of 75 Ikola would arrived tonight.

thanks so much,
wiryawan