Different kinds of foods for cichlids?

MrWynO14

I want to get some different kind of foods for my cichlids. I currently feed them a cichlid staple diet in pellet form. I was looking at tubifex worms, blood worms, daphnia, krill, ocean plankton, and brine shrimp in this petsolutions magazine I got. Are these all good supplemental foods for cichlids? I know that brine shrimp is supposed to be good, but am not sure about the rest of them. Should I go frozen, or freeze dried?

The cichlids I have are, Oscar, dempsey, green terror, jaguar, 2 texas, and a Zebra Tilapia. They are all still juveniles, the biggest one is the Oscar hes about 4 inches. Thanx in advance

iamntbatman

All of the foods you listed are perfectly healthy for your fish to eat (in small quantities of each, anyway) but some of the smaller ones, like the tubifex worms, daphnia, brine shrimp and even eventually the blood worms might not really be that efficient to feed to your fairly large fish. Personally, I much prefer frozen to freeze-dried foods, mostly because they're just easier to deal with.

1077

I too prefer frozen foods most of the time. I stay entirely away from Tubifex worms and choose chopped earthworms instead which I collect after a good rain, or purchase from bait shops. Have also fed Flukers freezedried crickets occaisionally. Found em in reptile section at Petco along with mealworms.
Be careful if collecting earthworms not to collect them from lawns or areas where fertilizers,pesticides,insecticides may have been used. I usually collect mine from conservation areas.

fryup

my mate uses tubifex with other products and the fish love them :):):)

rrcoolj

As far as cichlid food goes, a good staple food will most likely be so nutritionally sound that theoretically you don't have too feed any other supplements. But most people like to give thier fish the variety. I would reccomend a good staple food brand(New Life Spectrum or hikari cichlid gold) and supplement with FROZEN food as I have heard freez dried is not good for them. Alot of the items you listed would be ineffecient for the fish you have. I would feed them krill, insects(I use mealworms), Brine shrimp(they will out grow that soon), and when they are bigger maybe silversides. Krill is really good for them and is definatly the best nutritionally for them.

MrWynO14

Yea, I currently feed Hikari Gold as the staple diet, I just wanted to be able to give a variety. I've seen some freeze dried cube shaped brine shrimp and tubifex worms that were pretty big in size. They would probably be good for an adult cichlid. Sometimes I throw a moth or pincher bugs that I find in the tank, they seem to like them.

rrcoolj

That's fine. Don't feed them non water insects all the time but every once in a while is fine. As they get bigger you can feed larger items but at thier size I think brine shrimp is just fine.