Got a new Apistogramma Hongsloi pair. Best food?

[ue222]

Just got a new pair of apistogramma Hongsloi. I am keeping them alone, what’s the most ideal thing(s) I can feed them? Captive bred not wild. Thanks for suggestions!

 

[Jannik]

The #1 best food would be a variety of live food and mulm to sift through.
I feed my Apistos mainly these foods:
Live daphnia
Live blackworms
Live white mosquito larvae, black ones in the summer too
Live baby brine shrimp and rarely if i feel like buying it the adult brine shrimp
and sometimes some culled shrimps

For the fish i want to sell i will mix some high quality dry food in, so the people i sell them to can easily feed them.

 

[MacZ]

and mulm to sift through

To specify because there are different kinds of mulm:
Mulm from leaf litter and botanicals with fine sand under it.
Not that anybody gets the idea to skip maintenance if they have no leaves/botanicals and gravel, thinking the mulm in such a tank is good .

 

[Mike Wise]

Personally, I don't use or recommend any of the tubificid worms like black worms or tubifex unless they are raised in a clean environment - which commercial supplies for the most part are not. Also if your fish need more fatty foods like worms then whiteworms and Grindal worms are safer to use. I also suggest using a quality pellet food if your fish eat it. Variety is a good idea.

 

[anewbie]

Fluval bug bites for small fishes seems to work well.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Fluval bug bites for small fishes seems to work well.

I'm a Bugbite fan. My fish are always pretty picky because they mainly get live food, but they will eat Bugbites.

cheers Darrel

 

[anewbie]

Hi all,

I'm a Bugbite fan. My fish are always pretty picky because they mainly get live food, but they will eat Bugbites.

cheers Darrel

There is also an ebo insect fishfood; the difference is the nuggets are soft instead of hard but it is expensive. Also they don't really list the ingrediants which i always find suspicious.

 

[Ben Rhau]

Personally, I don't use or recommend any of the tubificid worms like black worms or tubifex unless they are raised in a clean environment - which commercial supplies for the most part are not. Also if your fish need more fatty foods like worms then whiteworms and Grindal worms are safer to use. I also suggest using a quality pellet food if your fish eat it. Variety is a good idea.

White worms and grindal worms require culturing. If you culture the blackworms, the advantage is that they're aquatic and can be left in the tank with significantly less danger of rotting.

I've tried culturing grindal worms, and have found it very labor intensive to deal with infestations. Currently devoting a tank to blackworms to see if that's any easier.

 

[Apistoguy52]

I’m a huge advocate of freshly hatched baby brine shrimp. If you’ve got the space and time, it is a fantastic one and done food. Have recently started stealing/feeding some xTreme cichlid peewee pellets intended for my hypancistrus that have exceeded my Apistogramma acceptance expectations.

 

[ue222]

Thank you all for the replies. I had a portion of blackworms from my LFS I feed my pea puffers that I gave the apistos a few before posting here.
I just fed them Fluval bug bites tropical and they seemed to go for them pretty quickly. I have vibra bites and micro pellets from hikari but those don’t seem to be as good for apistos based on ingredients?
I also have bug bites cichlid formula not sure if they are same as tropical formula but went with tropical to start.
For live food long term if I’m to stop using blackworms I’d like to use something I can feed my pea puffers too if possible or something I can seed into the tank over time. They also have fine sand with leaf litter to sift and pick at

 

[ue222]

Personally, I don't use or recommend any of the tubificid worms like black worms or tubifex unless they are raised in a clean environment - which commercial supplies for the most part are not. Also if your fish need more fatty foods like worms then whiteworms and Grindal worms are safer to use. I also suggest using a quality pellet food if your fish eat it. Variety is a good idea.

Is this because of parasites? What in particular about tubificid worms are bad for apistos (and in general, maybe I’ll stop feeding my peas them if they accept something else)

 

[MacZ]

Is this because of parasites? What in particular about tubificid worms are bad for apistos (and in general, maybe I’ll stop feeding my peas them if they accept something else)

Tubifex may carry whirling disease and a whole array of parasites. The latter tend to come also with cheap comercially produced bloodworms (red mosquito larvae) and cyclops.

 

[Mike Wise]

Tubificid worms are aquatic and thrive in - and collected commercially from - highly septic environments. They can carry many different pathogens. If you raise your own then they should be OK, but should be used sparingly due to their high fat content. White and Grindal worms, being terrestrial, are very unlikely to carry aquatic pathogens. Again they should be used sparingly due to their high fat content.

 

[ue222]

Scary! I won’t be using them again and I hope the first serving I gave them doesn’t harm my new beautiful pair of apistos. Thanks everyone for the information

 

[ue222]

Is there anything in particular to watch out for since I fed them 4 or so blackworms or is it just at this point they’ll be fine or they won’t. I figured since I’ve been using Blackworms for my peas and Cory’s for 6+ months I didn’t give it a second thought for the apistos.

 

[MacZ]

Most of the problems mentioned (too fatty etc) are only of concern if you feed them that regularly. It's fine if they gorge themselves for one feeding or two a month. But two or three a week are for sure too much.

Except avoiding problematic or unhealthy things there are simply two things you have to obey: Moderation in amounts and frequency and diversity of different food items. That's all.

 

[Ben Rhau]

I tend to feed worms around once a week in controlled moderation. I chop them for the nano fish, and for adult apisto-size fish, 2 or 3 worms per fish max. I don't let them gorge. Can feed more often if trying to condition them for breeding, but only on a temporary basis. Other keepers I know feed grindal worms more often that that, but I try to be conservative.

I agree that you shouldn't overdo it, but incorporating worms in a diverse diet is desirable because they contain highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA) which BBS do not. In <killifish>, HUFA deficiencies have been observed to impair growth and health. The same has been <characterized in commercial fish husbandry>.

Aside from the fat, worms are still very high in protein (between 65 and 75%, depending on the worm).

 

[xSparkleZ]

I feed the following throughout the week, but it might be overboard for some as I like to have their meals different from the last.

Monday: Fluval Bug Bites Bottom Feeder
Tuesday: Fluval Bug Bites Cichlid
Wednesday: Hikari Mini Pellets
Thursday: Hikari Mini Wafers
Friday: Hikari Frozen Spirulina Brine Shrimp
Saturday: Hikari Frozen Spirulina Mysis Shrimp
Sunday: Grindal Worms

Sunday is usually water change day, so they either fast or get fed the Grindal Worms.

I only feed once a day in the evenings and if I'm working from home, they will typically get a second feed in the morning with either Grindal Worms or fresh BBS.

 

[MacZ]

and diversity of different food items.

I should clarify, that I count all dry foods as one single item. So the brand or so doesn't matter. Standard foods have almost all the same ingredients in very similar ratios. Doesn't make sense to apply diversity to those.

 

[anewbie]

I should clarify, that I count all dry foods as one single item. So the brand or so doesn't matter. Standard foods have almost all the same ingredients in very similar ratios. Doesn't make sense to apply diversity to those.

Well the fluval bug bite ingrediants are radically different than the other foods. It lacks the wheat the fish by products that the hiraki wafers have.