Feeding Your African Cichlid Fish

Most beginners think that raising fish is really easy but this is not exactly the case. You will see that it is not that easy to raise African cichlids and they simply can not remain healthy with regular fish food available in pet stores. Not every single African cichlid type will need the exact same diet. When looking at eating habits we can say that we are in front of 4 main African cichlid fish categories. We thus have African cichlid fish that are micro predators, omnivorous, herbivorous and carnivorous.

In most cases the species that are meat eaters or plant eaters can also receive food from other good groups. The real problem is that you should never overdue this. If you have carnivorous African cichlid fish you are allowed to feed them a herbivore diet and the fish can survive but after some time it will become sick and eventually die. Before you even purchase your fish you need to know what to feed them.

Even if cichlid flake food will be perfect for most cichlids you still have to look at the ingredients that are included. Foods that contain a lot of fish meal and are fat based have to be well analyzed. Warm blood animal food should be always avoided under all circumstances. Live or frozen fish can be fed to your cichlids although this must not be the main diet of the African cichlid fish. In the event that you are raising cichlids that are carnivorous you should use flake food that includes vegetation together with a supplementation of krill and brine shrimp.

In the event that the African cichlid fish is showing yellow, reddish or orange coloration there will be a need to feed it food with plenty of pigmentation. There is an easy way to see if there is enough pigmentation in the food that you use. Fish is to lose coloring if this is not the case.

Besides what we mentioned above there is one more thing you need to pay attention to. A lot of beginners end up overfeeding the fish. Cichlids do not actually need so much food as some people think. Whenever overfeeding fish can easily die. Only feed your fish a maximum of 3 times each day and a quantity that can be consumed in 30 seconds. This is really enough.