What do you feed your Apistogramma's?

[West1]

I can't find anything about Diets on here so if you can post your feeding schedule.
Size of Apistogramma (feeding should vary based on Juvi/Adult)
exact food(s), times per day etc...

I am new to Apisto's and my first set should be here next week.

My hope is to try and get them to eat the DIY Gelatin foods I used to feed my 16" Vittatus African Tiger Fish and tankmates. I am leaning on more of a veggie diet and in small portions as the Gelatin foods usually last a week in the fridge. Maybe I am over thinking this as I am fresh out of "Monster Fish" and used to feeding large portions (just shut down my 300gl about 3 weks ago).

Anyways, feel free to post your feeding schedule for all to see :wink:

 

[Hmoobthor]

what i been feeding is New life spectrum cichlids pellets. I been using it for a while and don't notice much of color improvement. I am going to add Hikari sinking gold pellet to their diet to see if color will improve.

I only feed my fish once a day in the evening alternating between frozen bloodworm and brine shrimp here and there.

 

[slimbolen99]

If you can get them, and keep them alive, live California black worms are excellent. I also do frozen brine shrimp, frozen blood worms, and occasionally live brine shrimp. Any kind of flake food should be good, or pellets if you can get them to eat that. A varied diet goes a long way to healthy apistos, in my opinion, so I mix it up quite a bit. Good luck!

 

[bettamuse]

I feed two times a day.
Earthworm flake in the mornings.
The night feeds are a random affair. Each night may be different. Daphnia, brine shrimp, spirulina brine shrimp, rotifers.

Fry get two feeds, randomly,
Newly hatched brine shrimp, micro worms, daphnia.

 

[CopabX]

Tetra-min pellets or Topfin flakes in the morning, frozen bloodworms, brine shrimp, or mysis at around 5 pm. Sometimes put them on a full live brine shrimp diet when i get the chance to cultivate some.

 

[steve1572]

I feed all my pairs on bbs daphnia and gridleworm ive moved away from bloodworm as i was having problems with my fish getting bloated and dyeing i now only feed live food and frozen brine shrimp when im short of gridle and daphnia

 

[ste12000]

I feed newly hatched baby brineshrimp upto 10 times per day(Little and often) i hatch two batches per day.

I also feed daphnia in the spring summer(Cultured myself) Whiteworm, Grindalworm and a little of my home made seafood mix(Shrimp, mussel, whitefish, greens and a good cichlid pellet, all blended with gelatine and frozen)

I have fry in most tanks so it works for me..

 

[Mike Wise]

I feed BBS almost exclusively with additions of frozen shrimps (brine, gammerus) and glassworms. When I had them, I'd feed grindal or earthworms 1X/week. Never use aquatic worms. Too many horror stories with these. I've tried most of the prepared flakes & pellets, but none seem to be eaten well. The last prepared foods that were even interesting to my apistos were the original formiula of Aquarian flake from the 80s (different formula now) and Xenopus 'frog brittle' (messy & caused bacterial blooms if not careful). I would raise mosquito larvae, but with West Nile Virus being present here, I doubt that the neighbors or local government would appreciate it.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I also feed Daphnia in the spring summer(Cultured myself) Whiteworm, Grindalworm and a little of my home made seafood mix(Shrimp, mussel, whitefish, greens and a good cichlid pellet, all blended with gelatine and frozen)

Pretty much the same as Steve, with the exception of the BBS, I also use a DIY shrimp mix based upon the recipe from Ad Konings "Enjoying Cichlids". I also feed a lot of other live food, mainly swimming Mayfly nymphs and Glassworm larvae in the winter and a lot of mosquito larvae in the summer. I feed live Bloodworm and the maggots of Drosophila Fruit flies when other live food is scarce. I also feed any spare Red Cherry Shrimps.

I'm trying to culture a few more of the foods from Michael Hellweg's "Culturing Live Food".

The only pelleted food I feed is "Red Astax" crumb from "TA Aquaculture" in the UK.
Fry I feed with microworms and rotifers and I have several large clumps of Moss that I rotate around the tanks. If you can feed very fine pelleted food (I just crush up the Astax crumb) along with some food that moves and stimulates the feeding response in fry you can get away without using BBS, although their use would almost certainly increase fry survival.

cheers Darrel

 

[HaakonH]

I've always used adult (dead) brine shrimp as main food, my experience is that this is the food most likely to be eaten by any Apisto. It's always worked very well for conditioning wild specimens with sunken bellies. I sporadically use other frozen foods like mosquito larvae, daphnia, cyclops, mysis...but it seems that these options are not as eagerly accepted as the BS (except from the red mosquitos, which I don't want to use too often). Live BBS is excellent when it's available, but even the bbs eggs without shells are good for use, but a bit messy.

Dry food is a bit tricky, but I've had best success with rapidly dissolving tablets like Tetra TabiMin and Tetra Tips. Recently I've tried out Aquatic Nature's Dwarf Cichlid granules, which are small grains that are working surprisingly well. I've rarely seen Apistos so excited about a dry food before. Highly recommended.

Haakon

 

[Bilbo]

I have been very fortunate over this summer. An inlet close to our local beach is teeming with mysis shrimp and a friend on a farm has daphnia in most of the cow troughs and mossys in the water barrels so my fish have fed very well recently on live food. They also get de-capsulated BS every second or third day.

GP Juvenile Diet is used once or twice a week and that seems to be taken ok but definitely not with the same enthusiasm as mysis or mosquito larvae.