Feeding rainbow fishes

09augustus2006
Source: EZNC 26: Regenboogvissen. Aanschaf, voeding, verzorging en gedrag, Gunther Schmida
Being omnivores, rainbow fishes eat both animal and plant food products. In nature they eat everything they can swallow. In the wild 40% of the feed consists of...
land insects (e.g. ants), 37% of small crustaceans, 18% insect larvae (e.g. mosquito larvae). The other 5% consists of algae and plant seeds. This ration differs between themselves and is strongly dependant on the environment, season and weather condition.

It is important for red rainbow fishes that live in an aquarium to obtain varied feed. As rainbow fishes are all but picky, they do not show whether they receive a complete and right feed. It is therefore important for owners to note themselves not to feed the fishes the same feed months in a row.

As a change, give rainbow fishes living feed twice a week. Suitable living feed may consist of: water flees, white mosquito larvae, black mosquito larvae, or aquatic worms (a.k.a. tubifex). You can catch these animals yourself with a scoop net. Do watch out for carrying pathogens like gastroenteric worms, and scoop these animals from a fish free pool. Another possibility is to catch small grasshoppers in unsprayed grasslands. Kill the feed which you catch yourself in the freezer and pulverize is before feeding it to the rainbow fish. In order to prevent contamination with parasites, frozen food offers a good alternative to living feed.