Did I do something wrong? not one response. It appears many people on this site make their own food but there must be a few that don't and have opinions on the above.
I am the the process of establishing an adult Discus tank (moving from salt to fresh) and thus coming to the experts for advise. I have been reading as many article as possible and there is a lot of great info available, most of it makes since (thus far). In regards to food... it appears food quality, variety and # of feedings are the main areas to address. I understand the main variable to add to the mix here is ... what will you Discus ultimately eat, I wanted to get you top 5 list for Discus on the following :
Top 5 quality Pellets
Top 5 quality Flakes
Top 3 Auto feeders
Thank you in advance for you advise and opinions
P.s... my tank size is 1000G
Did I do something wrong? not one response. It appears many people on this site make their own food but there must be a few that don't and have opinions on the above.
You've probably not received any replies simply because your original post was around the holidays. Here's my two cents.
Fish require less variety than you might think. For example, you can be extremely successful with keeping discus just by feeding them FDBW (Freeze-Dried BlackWorms). They have all the nutritional value that is required for discus. If you think about it, they live off mostly insects and other small critters in the wild, so domestic breeds won't be that far off. There is no need to add more variety than that.
All the variables you are looking to address really just depends on you, the fish-keeper's preference, as well as the age of the fish. For example, many folks will raise young/juvenile discus by feeding them a BH (Beef Heart) recipe of some sort alongside some other variety of dry pellet/flake foods 4-6 times per day. Why? I can see a few reasons. The biggest here being that juvenile discus require more food to grow. They're being fed BH because a higher protein diet (along with very frequent water changes) helps them grow faster and typically larger. Unless you're rolling in disposable income, most of us add variety in the form of dry pellet/flake foods because it's cheaper. Now, if you have just one tank with very few discus, this discrepancy in cost may be quite negligible. When you start owning 5/10/20+ aquariums with many discus, this cost difference can really make a difference. As far as adults are concerned (5.5-6"+), you can usually get away with just 2 feedings a day.
Asking for top X of anything is going to result in a lot of mixed opinions and like you said, it is ultimately up to what your discus will eat.
Here's a rundown of what mine will eat and what I feed on a regular basis (in no particular order, and I personally do not feed BH mix because it's just too messy for me):
Al's FDBW
NLS (New Life Spectrum) Cichlid Pellets
Omega One Marine Flakes
Sera Discus Granules
As far as auto-feeders are concerned, I've only ever used the Eheim Everyday Feeder when I've gone on vacation.
OK. After having a couple of the hoppers on Eheim auto feeders fall off into the tank I have switched to Torland auto feeders. I have two on each of my discus and angelfish tanks. On my discus tanks, one of the feeders has Tropical Discus Granules D-50 food in it and the other has freeze-dried blood worms in it; one of the feeders feeds a half-hour after the lights turn on and the other half-hour before the lights turn off. During the time in between, they are fed either freeze-dried tubifex or black worms. I do not feed my discus either flakes or beef heart. My discus are all very healthy eaters, they swarm up to the glass when they see me walk by.
Last edited by dornblaser; 12-01-2020 at 01:32 PM.
Thank you for the responses...... very helpful. I do look forward to any other info you are willing to share as well ..... you can never get enough info.
The answer to your question...... yes my aquarium is 1000G (that's the show tank) I guess some people also their sump size (mine is 250G) to get to a "total system" size of 1250G depending on how you look at it. As I mentioned earlier, I am switching from salt to fresh
The automatic feeder David recommended seems pretty promising. Here's an Amazon link.
There's tons of information in the various sections of the forum if you peruse them and read stickies. A 1,000G aquarium with that large of a sump is a massive aquarium so there's a lot you can do with it.