Live foods are extremely beneficial for your freshwater fish’s health. Cultured foods usually have high nutritional value and they last long. Provide your pet fish with live feedable once and it can last for up to 3-4 hours or even days at a time. This alone clears out the hassle of constantly providing your fish with food, or feeding in your absence.
They don’t dirty up the tank water or block the filtration system. As the aquarium environment is clean, the chances of your fish getting unwell from live foods, is close to none. Lastly, it does not even limit the algae growth in your aquarium.
Most bottom-dwellers feed on it, so the addition of live foods does not change that. Live foods, besides their intense protein boost and other health benefits, promote a lot of important fish activities.
List of Live Foods and Their Pros
Let us have a look at few of the most known live eating choices for your freshwater pet fish and exactly how they are so beneficial.
Infusoria
They are extremely useful for small fishes and fry. It’s not expensive to culture them, so infusoria is rather a very budget-friendly way to feed your fish with a gush of nutrients.
Vinegar Eels
Vinegar Eels are technically a sort of bridge between bigger and smaller live foods. Best for fishes who don’t prefer too small choices like infusoria, this item has the perfect size and texture for your pet fish at home to eat. Plus, it has so many benefits!
Another benefit of Vinegar Eels is that, they stay suspended in the water column and can survive for days. All of these perks and they are still low maintenance, which is fascinating. In easier words, most fish foods tend to sink or dissolve.
That way, it can only be advantageous for our bottom-dwelling buddies. Fish in the other layers get somewhat neglected. In that case, Vinegar Eels turn out to be the choice you’ve been looking for.
Microworms
Microworms and similar worms like Walter Worms, Banana Worms are great for fish’s fry. Other than that, they turn out to be a good, rather beneficial choice for small fishes in general.
This in fact, is a very versatile live fish food choice for their dense nutritional value. Adding to the several benefits of live feedable, they are prolific and quick breeders. Naturally, it is quite easy to culture them.
Springtails
Don’t worry our precious surface dwellers! We got you there. Springtails are probably one of the few live fish food variables that’s strictly a surface food. They are technically unsinkable!
Flightless Fruit Flies
Another surface live fish food is Flightless Fruit Flies. However, they can’t fly but they can crawl really rapidly. This movement factor is really appealing to your pet fish, making it easy to feed like most live food choices.
Mostly meant for surface feeding, these fruit flies have plenty of benefits and you can feed them to fishes of most sizes! Be it big or small.
Daphnia
Daphnia is an absolute aquarist’s favourite. This is the type of live fish food that can be fed to most fishes. Newly-born Daphnias’ are very small, so easily it can be a good live feedable choice. Especially for small species of fish, like the majority of freshwater fishes.
Otherwise, the bigger or mature variants can be fed to most adult species where they accept this food with utmost satisfaction. However, keep an eye out for population explosion and don’t forget to culture them with care.
Daphnia, nonetheless, is very good for fishes as they have natural roughage along with their hopping motion (water fleas) in water, making fishes chase them.
Bean Beetles
It’s a very fitting live food variant that can satiate both your pet fish or amphibians, if you have any. The texture is crunchy, so if your precious pet likes a little crunch in their meals, this is the one for you. Extremely easy to culture, with no requirement of additional food or water.
However, keep in mind, they are good climbers. Make sure the container you’re keeping them in is closed, so that they are well preserved.
Isopods
Yet another aquarist’s pick could be Isopods. They are good cleaners, especially in a vivarium. Otherwise, they serve as a good fish food medium for your medium-large sized pet. Isopods are rich in calcium and quite adorable with the variety of patterns they come in.
Grindal Worms
Grindal Worms are really appealing to fishes of smaller size for their unique shape. On getting bigger they can also be fed to bigger fishes. Advantages to them include encouragement for fish breeding and promoting growth in young fry. Monitor them well while culturing, by carefully looking out for fungus gnats, flies or mite infestations.
Crickets
House Crickets appeal to a wide variety of species. The pin-head variant appeals to the smaller fish crowd, whereas the larger ones can interest bigger fish species like the Red-tail Catfish as well! Their reproduction process is quick, making the availability of this live food variant plenty.
Conclusion
All in all, live fish food choices have a lot of pros, and the cons are almost negligible or subjective. Flakes or pellets can be good for keeping.
However, to be able to provide your freshwater beauty with a live variant, is just more beneficial. Live foods also bring in the essence of the fish’s natural habitat and instil their raw wild instinct, which is perfect.
