The complex diet.

[Irondale]

I was wondering if some veggie based foods would benefit my P. Dovii and why it would benefit a carnivores species. Thanks.;)

[fishmaven]

Logan,
That's really good question. The simplest answer would be to say carnivores require a different diet than herbivores. I don't believe that though. I think there's probably an all-in-one food that would satisfy the nutritional requirements of practically any fish. It's not in the best interests of the manufacturers that produce foods for aquarium fish to offer that food. Selling one food vs selling dozens of food products, which brings in the most money? My guess, the more variety they offer, the more products they sell. I can illustrate this by saying that whenever Tetra wants a good quarter they offer more sizes of all their foods, requiring the distributors to buy the new sizes. If the new sizes don't sell they just run specials on them to run them off the shelves of both distributors and stores.

In my opinion, the best food for your dovii would be livefoods like ghost shrimp. Unless you're raising or collecting them yourself it gets expensive. The quality of feeders like goldfish varies so much that I can't recommend them at all with vary rare exceptions.

Most here would go with a pelleted or extruded food. Someone will chime in with the brand of the month in the next post or two.

Another option would be to make the food you're going to feed. you can find some formulas here on the ACA Forum.
Dan
I was wondering if some veggie based foods would benefit my P. Dovii and why it would benefit a carnivores species. Thanks.;)

[pitdogg2]

I fed mine a mix of hakari bio-cichlid gold and cichlid excel.. plus hakari massivore,uncooked shrimp(unshelled),earthworms and crawdads i caught in the summer. It NEVER ever had any live goldfish. I did feed some of my african cichlids to him when they started to over populate the tank with fry. I also bought smelt from the local grocery store fish counter and cut into peices it could eat.

[phishes]

From what I understand most pellets have enough vitamins and fiber so that you don't need veggie based foods. Some people say veggie matter is good for carnivorus fish, but these fish don't eat these foods in the wild and they do just fine. I would give a varried diet like pellets, feeder fish, shrimp, earth worms....

[chc]

The science of animal nutrition helps us determine the best foods for a given species (whether fish or otherwise). Unfortunately, most "common knowledge" in the hobby isn't worth much, and most prepared foods are big on marketing and little on content (check the label on most "veggie flakes"). There's lots of educational stuff on the web that'd fill a rainy weekend if you're curious.

Carnivores eat, for the most part, herbivores and omnivores. As a result, they indirectly get a fair portion of vegetable matter in their diets. At the very least they get the benefit of the vitamins and minerals associated with such matter. That's why a steady diet of store bought live food is often nutritionally deficient. Most feeders, by the time you buy them, haven't recently (if ever) been fed a proper diet themselves. Some are severely malnourished by the time they reach your fish. Of course, they make up for that with the double dose of disease they often carry! Hahaha!

My dovii all eat NLS pellets (which, incidentally, have a good veggie content), market shrimp, and endless numbers of the mosquitofish which have over-populated my water hyacinth-stuffed outdoor tank. Unlike store bought feeders, those mosquitofish enjoy a very healthy, natural diet and are, as a result, nutritious little snacks.