Feeding ideas for African Cichlids

I have African Cichlids and I'm courious what other people feed them as far as Veggies, and live foods. What do you perfer??? I know that they like a wide gammet of veggies and live........

 

besides the standard fish flake I used to feed mine blood worms and dried shrimp.

Since dried shrimp in a can can be $$$ , I discovered that I could get a very large bag at a local Oriental food store.
Which was a fraction of the price at the pet store. I fed them these for a number of years without any problems.

I've since stopped doing this because the shrimp shells are usually spit out by the Cichlids causing the bottom to become more dirty after a long period of time.

 

I have a 100 gal. and a 110 gal. with assorted africans. Mine love romaine lettuce, I hang a piece on a vege clamp inside their tank and it's like a feeding frenzy, lol! I also give them a treat of frozen brine shrimp once in awhile. Mostly I feed them pellets, food sticks, and vege flakes.

 

I feed a variety of pellet foods, spriolina (sp), flake, frozen brine shrimp, cucumbers, zuc's but they love the cuc's more. Algae sheets are also a fav. I have found that I can't feed cuc's very often because my late pleco got a blockage must have gotten a little seed that I missed and he passed. Never tried romaine lettuce do you blanch it or just wash it and stick it in there??

 

I just wash a leaf of romaine lettuce and clip it to the inside tank wall with a vege clip. They all love it. Here's a couple of pictures of my peacocks eating romaine lettuce.

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Well I just tried the romaine lettuce in my tank of Africans and wow it looks like swiss romaine.... :mrgreen: I think that they liked it.

 

I have a couple of African tanks, the 100gal. in the pictures and a 110 gal. I put the romaine in both tanks, and they really love it; by the time they get done, the lettuce stalk looks like a twig with some branches, nothing left of it!! I am going to try slicing and blanching some zucchini for them, too and see how they like it. I bought a couple of plecos for the 100 gal. and I heard they like the zucchini and romaine, too.

 

I have a couple of African tanks, the 100gal. in the pictures and a 110 gal. I put the romaine in both tanks, and they really love it; by the time they get done, the lettuce stalk looks like a twig with some branches, nothing left of it!! I am going to try slicing and blanching some zucchini for them, too and see how they like it. I bought a couple of plecos for the 100 gal. and I heard they like the zucchini and romaine, too.

 

:mrgreen: In my 30 gal it is sectioned off by plexi glass.... 1 pleco on each side results of Romaine..... left side nothing left but what was covered by the clip.... Right side just the stem.....

55 gal nothing left but the stem

:mrgreen: :mrgreen:

I'm really surprised the fish and pleco's are even able to swim today!!!! Happy fish

 

Do you clamp the zucchini and cucumber on a vege clamp, or do you just let them drop to the bottom of the tank? Just curious, I've never feed them that before, I thought I would try it and see how they like that.

 

I've found that the clamps don't go wide enough so what I do is I use the hard long skinny tubes for the filters and spear them and use a suction cup to keep it against the wall... if that makes sense...

Make sure you take the cuc seeds out.... plugged my pleco up and killed him....

 

That sounds like a good idea! I wasn't quite sure how to hold them in place, I will have to try something like that. Sorry about your pleco! I just bought a couple of them about a week ago in hopes to get rid of some brown algae in my tank.

 

Thanks Nano "Rex" was a Bruno pleco and he was 7" or so long and beautiful!!! He owned the tank he could go anywhere he wanted even in the homes/caves of the dominant males!!! Nobody messed with him!! Oh well never thought it would happen....he loved cuc's!!!!

 

Below I mention some food name which you can easily use for your cichlid fish.

1. Tetra TetraCichlid Balanced Diet Flakes Food.
2. Omega One.
3. Hikari Cichlid Gold Floating Pellets.
4. New Life Spectrum Cichlid Formula.