Food Suggestions for a Peacock/Hap Tank

[BiGBlak]

I currently Use these . Looking to keep some variety in there diet, also i hear cooked shrimp and such is good for them as a treat ? What other cooked food is good for them for treats ? And what about blood worms.

[Lady10Godiva]

I have mbuna (no haps or peacocks). I feed the sinking hikari excel and spirulina flakes. They get ghost shrimp about once a month as a treat (they eat small crustaseans in the wild). No blood worms for my fish due to risk or malawi bloat. I do feed raw zuccini sometimes, they dont really care for it though.

[BiGBlak]

Yea i know i had them previously and thats why im asking because i know peacocks and hap and more meat eaters then mbuna so im trying to see what acceptable instead of assuming and potentially harming my beautiful babies lol.

[Lady10Godiva]

One thing I saw on another blog is that Hikari typically places pictures of the cichlids each food is supposed to feed. Excel features african fish and other foods like bio gold and staple show north and south african fish. I dont know how true it is but the different hikari foods have pretty different protein values.

I havent fully researched peacocks or haps but when I got my different mbuna I just looked at a few fish profiles on them (mine all say herbivore or omnivore), that might help you out.


Good luck with your new fish.

[escamosa]

I would probably feed them the Hikari Cichlid Gold pellets, or if those NLS pellets are higher in protien than the Hikari Excell and suitable for cichlids , then more of those. Supplement that diet with some spirulina flakes and the Hikari Excell. The spirulina, which is still very good for peacocks, is also great for making their blue colouring really pop out. So keep adding that to their diet, if you choose to feed them the Hikari Cichlid Gold. The Hikari Cichlid Gold has what they call carotanoids in it, which is great for keeping the colour of your fishes looking good, but it does seem to lack a bit of extra oomf when it comes to some blue fish. It's great for yellow coloured fish. Foods with krill in it will give extra help with redish coloured fish. Live foods, such as bloodworms should only be given as a treat - once a week or fortnight. Fresh veggies and fruit can be given to them, but they're not overly fussed about them a lot of the time. Softened shelled and squished up peas, softened zuchini, softened broccoli, apple, pear, kiwi fruit.

[BiGBlak]

Yea i have to buy some more spirulina flakes, for live food i know most of them should only be treats but which ones are a no-no? Bloodworms wont cause bloat right ? Im sure with a good variety of all mentioned and good water conditions i will get any color to pop just want a high quality variety avoiding malowi bloat.

[escamosa]

The only live food that I stay right away from is tubifex worms. Tubifex worms can be bred in some horrible places. Other names that they're called are sludge worms or sewer worms... Need I say more?

Peacocks will enjoy most foods, and will need a higher protien diet, compared to mbuna. You'll actually find that more than half of malawi bloat cases are caused by stress, related to other areas of the hobby other than diet. Some people try and add salt to their African tanks to attempt to make a more natural environment, but it's just simply not needed, and that is a major cause of bloat. The wrong set up with cichlids - bad species combinations, bad species ratios, bad environmental set ups, - can all cause stress, which in turn can cause bloat. Much to the disgust of some other mbuna keepers, I give mine a fortnightly treat of either bloodworms or brineshrimp, and I've never had a case of bloat.

Bloodworms can be pretty hard for most fish to digest because of the outer shell of the worm, so a constant serving of these is no good at all. A once a week or once a fortnight treat is perfectly ok because the fishes are getting plenty of time to digest them. And quite a lot of the other foods that you offer them will aid their digestion. Your peacocks will enjoy them, in moderation!

[Northerly]

I use a mixture of things for my malawi. Staple: kens premium foods, both cichlid pellets and super color pellets(1mm) and veggie flakes. Also I feed things like meat and spirulina wafers(from men's) and occasionally frozen foods such as musket shrimp, spirulina brine, and bloodworms. They seem pretty happy and healthy to me. I'll add though that I try to balance out the proteins and veggies, as too much protein is detrimental to malawi especially certain mbuna such as labs. Good luck! Would love to see pictures of the tank.

[BiGBlak]

I just added these two foods today while i was at the LFS I was going to get cichlid gold but bio gold was higher in protein. And I like TetraVeggie Spirulina Flakes so o picked up some of those as well. I will wait a bit on the live food since they are still babies.

[BiGBlak]

Im just going to alternate each pellet for the first feeding following it up with the veggies the second feeding .