Once you have purchased your fish, you need to supply them with the proper food that will keep them healthy and happy. It doesn’t always have to be a big bag of fish flakes. Your fish also need good nourishment that will give them an active life, enhance their growth and stimulate breeding. Their diet should also give them a more efficient immune system against sickness.

One popular type of fish food is the dry fish food. This includes flakes, pellets, wafers, and granules. There are many different formulations of dry fish food to cater to different species of fish. They can be made from plant, animal or fish products. Most of them are fortified with vitamins and minerals for a more complete nutritional diet for your fish. Some are concocted for special purposes like intensifying the colors of the fish or making the scales shinier.

Larger fish, those bigger than an inch, require a more specialized diet. The carnivores or omnivores will prefer meat in their diet. One very popular meat food is bloodworms. Bloodworms are red mosquito larvae that can be purchased frozen from aquarium supply stores. They are considered the more nutritious alternative to flakes and pellets. They look like small ice cubes when packaged and you just drop these cubes in the aquarium water when it’s feeding time.

Other fresh or frozen foods available for your fish are brine shrimp or krill. These are given to fish not just for their nutritional value but also for the way they bring out the colors in tropical fish. The Daphnia, or water flea, a small crustacean, on the other hand is not very big on nutritional value, but is still a favorite with some fish. These two fish foods are available in most aquarium supply stores.

Larger fish enjoy earthworms or other worms. Worms are high in protein, but like the Daphnia, they do not provide a balanced diet, and should not be your fish’s only food source. Large predatory fish enjoy eating small feeder fish, although if you have an aquarium of community fish, they will not routinely go after smaller fish.

These foods can all be purchased at your local aquarium supply store, and can be used in rotation to add variety to your fish’s diet. Like people, fish do get tired of eating the same thing day after day. Live or frozen solid foods can also be used to supplement a diet of dried pellets or flakes.

Herbivores, unlike carnivores, will be happier snacking throughout the day rather than eating at a regular schedule. Fresh plants in aquarium tanks are good sources of food for them, and they can also eat any algae that are present in the aquarium.

You can also give them food that you have prepared yourself. Blanched spinach leaves, sliced zucchini and cucumber, and boiled peas can be allowed to float for an hour or two. Just give enough time for the fish to fill themselves and then remove them from the water. Other food option for herbivores are dried algae wafers.

When choosing foods for your fish, adjust your choice to reflect your fish’s needs, and don’t forget to provide variety. A balanced diet that has been well chosen in accordance to the fish species will ensure that your fish are healthy and thriving in your aquarium. Remember, a diet of dry fish flakes may not be enough. There are lots of simple foods that can keep your fish happy and healthy with a just a little bit of research on your part.

Leonard Boyler has been keeping fish for more than 20 years. His favorite products make aquarium care and maintenance very easy from start up to clarifying cloudy fish tanks. To learn more about how to keep your water clear and your fish healthy, please visit ONEdersave.com.

When children get their first fish, if this is something that they want, can be a very exciting time. However, it can also be when a child first has to confront what happens when a life comes to an end. Fish as pets are risky because they can die early, but they can also be fun and easy for a first pet for any child. They require very little upkeep once they are in the tank and doing fine. It’s getting there that can be the battle for parents. There are some things to keep in mind when getting aquarium fresh water fish for your child’s first pet.

If your child wants to get aquarium fresh water fish, you have to tell them that they are going to have to wait for the fish, but you can get started right away. You should take your child to the store, or look online, and see what size tank you want to get and take it home or order it. If you want to have more than one fish, avoid the one gallon size tank, as that is only good for just one fish. Follow the instructions for fish limits when buying or the fish will not last very long. If it says just one fish, that is all you can have in there. Most very small tanks only handle one or two at the most.

Once you have the tank in your hands for your aquarium fresh water fish, tell your children that they can help you set it up, but do not go out and get your fish. You want to choose the rocks you want to have at the bottom, any decorations and plants (remember fish need places to hide), and the chemicals and foods that you are going to need for your fish. This will be fun stuff to choose, but your child will not understand why they can not get their fish just yet. The reason for this lies with the filters and air supplies that you are going to be buying as well.

You may get lucky and put your aquarium fresh water fish right into a new tank and they will do well. For the most part, however, this is not going to happen. In order for a fish tank to work well and support life, there has to be a balance of bacteria in the water that agrees with life. If your tank does not have this good bacteria, your fish are not going to last long. Many experts recommend that you set up your tank, start the filter and air, and let it run for four to six weeks before you consider adding fish. This makes the water ideal for them when they do arrive, and they are more likely to survive.

Once this time has passed and your water is indeed as it should be (look for help and kits to let you know that this is the case), you can then add your fish. Take your child with you and let them choose the fish that they want, and learn how to safely add them to the tank that you have had up and running for some time. If you follow all of these instructions, your aquarium fresh water fish have a much better chance of surviving and thriving in your care and your child can enjoy them for some time to come.

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You’ve probably seen live rock in all the most elegant saltwater aquariums you remember. They sell aquarium live rock in all the better aquarium supplies stores: pieces of undersea coral reef broken off through the natural action of the sea, picked up by divers for use in aquaria. Coral reefs are made of a very porous substance. The ocean’s underwater environment is filled with tiny creatures, crabs, crustaceans, algae and myriad other life forms that make their home in the little pores, nooks and crannies of these reefs. When a piece breaks off and is fished up by people for use in aquaria, these rocks come with all the life that fills their entire structure; hence the name, live rock.

The saltwater aquarium is a pretty popular option around homes these days; it wasn’t really an option up until a few years ago when aquarium live rock was not commonly available. What is it about live rock that helps though? The thing is, when you put a hunk of live rock into your aquarium, you give the thousands of organisms holed up within, a home in your tank as well; in return, they are happy to earn their keep by entering a symbiotic relationship with their tankmates, the fish.

Fish eat and breathe in the same water space they release their bodily waste in; someone’s got to clean up all the pollution in the water before it gets too thick for the fish. Of course you could always roll up your sleeves every couple of days and filter it all out with plenty of time and equipment. With aquarium live rock though, all you need to do is leave it to the organisms in the rock, the aerobic and anaerobic critters, to turn the bodily waste floating about in the water into harmless nitrogen that bubbles up to the surface and leaves.

The rule of thumb for the quantity of live rock you want for your saltwater aquarium is about a pound of rock for every gallon of water your aquarium holds. But you can’t just lie back and relax just yet; the aquarium live rock that you buy from your aquarium supplies store needed to make quite a trip to your home all the way from the bottom of the sea. The living organisms in there seem to not find the inside of a mail order store’s mailer box quite as hospitable to life as the bottom of their favorite sea. After the grueling trip making it to your aquarium, the rock will take a while to acclimatize to its new surroundings and grow the full complement of life forms it is capable of. In the meantime, you will need to check the nitrate levels in your water from time to time and use a protein skimmer to take up the slack until your live rock kicks in.

When aquarium live rock does kick in though, there is quite nothing like it: the fish love to play around it, the rocks grow beautiful colorful algae and plants, and the rock really lives, changing from day to day in the life it supports. There are several kinds of aquarium live rock you’ll get to choose from when you set forth to buy some. There are rocks from the Fiji Islands, there is Atlantic rock and there is aquaculture rock. The ones from the Pacific are real coral reef, but when you buy something of this kind you never know if environmentally friendly harvesting practices were used to get them. Aquaculture rock could be the best choice; they artificially place porous rock at the bottom of the sea a couple of years to get all the life forms to take to them, and then ship it to you. If you have a saltwater marine aquarium, you owe it to your fish to help them feel at home. They’ll be healthier and happier for your trouble.

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