Fish Eating Habits
Fish have developed techniques in obtaining their food, and they have all the means to do so. Their diet ranges from microscopic plants to large animals. Their hunting ability depends on the body type and environment that they have.
Fish have specialized filtering structures found in their mouths, like that of a whale shark that feeds on phytoplankton.
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Types Of Food Fish
In selecting food fish, there are three types of food that you may want to consider so you can find out about their comfort food.
Natural Foods
This type of food is found in the pond or their habitat. That may include microorganisms formed in the waters, aquatic plants such as lily pads and seagrass, and small insects.
Supplementary Foods
These are feeds that you are distributing daily in the pond such as local terrestrial plants and agricultural by-products.
Complete Feeds
This type of food is also regularly distributed to them, as they are mixed carefully by fish researchers. Having feeds is to complete the nutrients needed by the fish and what they find easy to digest.
This can be bought in a commercial store and quite pricey compared to the other two types of food.
Four Basic Eating Groups
Fish diet patterns can differ depending on what kind of species they are and their size; thus, there’s no universal food for them. Fish can be divided into 4 subgroups according to their diet scheme.
Carnivores
Carnivores are meat-eating fish that takes more than 45% of protein from their diet. Just in case you are keeping a carnivorous fish, have them separated from other fishes because they might mysteriously disappear.
Carnivorous fish, if deficient in protein, might become severely malnourished and die. Their diet includes earthworms, nightcrawlers, leeches, shrimp, fruit flies, oysters, and other meats that can strengthen their bodies.
Herbivores
Herbivorous fish can only eat plants regularly, which is not high-maintenance pets because they can usually find their food in their environment.
Whether you will feed them with complementary feeds, they will not care about it since they wanted the taste of real plants. Interestingly, herbivorous fish have unmanageable digestion for meats because of their long digestive tracts.
They feed on lettuce and fruits apples and pears, which is full of vitamins.
For herbivorous fish keepers, they designed their aquarium of plastic plants rather than the real ones because there’s a tendency that the real plants will be mauled completely by herbivorous fish.
The alternative of better fish keeping for herbivores is to plant vegetables in the aquarium so fish can just nip at them as long as they like.
Omnivores
They are certainly not the picky type of fish because they can eat anything but that characteristic is what makes them far more dangerous than the other two subgroups.
They are aggressive eaters, and fish keepers can sometimes misunderstand their eating patterns, leading them to overfeed them. The most nutrients that they needed are Vitamins B1, B2, B6, and C.
Examples of their diet are commercial flake foods and frozen and live foods.
Limnivores
This subgroup is a special kind and newly discovered because limnivores are mud-eaters and feed mostly on algae and other microorganisms.
Currently, fish scientists are investing too much of their time to investigate the very nature of limnivores because their diets came from unhealthy foods.
How To Feed The Fish
As a passionate fish owner, you must do your best to keep your fish healthy. Proper feeding to your fish is a lifestyle for both the owner and the fish.
Before deciding to pet a fish, always make sure that you’ve done enough research about their very nature so you would understand them better. Fish diet scheme and their nature need a lot of patience and observation.
Overfeeding seems to be a common mistake for fish keepers because it would only produce a lot of toxic in their bodies and, sadly, could be the reason for their departure. Fish are not meticulous eaters, so they will eat whatever things you are sprinkling.
For more information, fish can digest their food in their stomachs in 16 to 24 hours, so it’s okay to feed them once a day with a little sprinkle of fish feed as feeds can dissolve into the water.
Herbivorous fish are a special kind of fish since they don’t have a stomach to digest their food. All you have to set up is some leafy vegetables in the aquarium, and they will nip as long as they like.
Feeding Natural Fish Food Organism
Natural fish food organisms are found in the water, like phytoplanktons, zooplanktons, and annelids. Feeding the fish with natural foods is important because it kept a sufficient amount of proteins and vitamins needed by the fish.
An example is plankton that can be fed to the younger fish. The phytoplankton is mostly found in a well-groomed pond, and generally, they are the reasons that give off color green because of chlorophyll.
Phytoplankton releases nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron in the water and exemplifies fixing solar energy by photosynthesis. On the other hand, zooplankton is found in shallow water areas and have an important role in the food chain as they are fed mostly by the fish.
Conclusion
Fish are lone creatures that needed more understanding, just like humans do. If they are deficient in the needed vitamins and nutrients, it may only cause a sudden loss of appetite and hinder their growth.
If you have noticed that there is some unwanted substance in their ponds and aquariums, make sure to have them removed as soon as you can because there are many negative bacteria not beneficial to the fish, so frequent water changes are advisable.
When buying products for them, never fail to forget to look at the nutritional value so you’ll know what keeps them or not.
