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Hey all, I've gotten 6 Blue Tetras and they are doing well so far. I've been feeding them the NLS crumbles and I have already seen their colour improve.

However, the food is old and I need to buy something new.

Any suggestions as to what would be best for them? (we can't do live food all the time, only as a treat).

Thanks!

They are not picky and you can pretty much feed them whatever you want. Live and frozen foods (along with low pH and hardness) will significantly improve their color, and good-quality flakes are fine as a staple food.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

As they are not picky have a look at My Profile there is a huge range of foods that I have used.

Have a look in [link=My Profile]http://
www.fishprofiles.com/interactive/forums/profile.asp?userid=6741" style="COLOR: #00FF00[/link] for my tank info

[link=Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tanks]http://photobucket.com/albums/b209/keithgh/Betta%20desktop%20tank/" style="COLOR: #00FF00[/link]

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
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I realize that they are not picky, but I was curious if there were certain foods they had done better on based on personal experience.
Also what type of foods do they eat in the wild, do they need more meat derived protein in their diet then some other species?
What Protein & Fat % should I be aim for in their staple diet?

I believe they greatly enjoy meaty foods, and in the wild eat insect larvae as well as possibly small crustaceans. These tetras do benefit from a mixed diet though, so be sure to give them food products which contain plant matter (typical flake foods should be fine) on occasion. Like the others, I find that blue tetras are not choosy eaters at all. They will accept almost anything you give them, and go crazy for smallish worm foods such as bloodworms. You shouldn't have to worry about giving them foods with specific protein and fat concentrations as long as you give your tetras a healthy balanced diet.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

OK thank you.
Then I will get a high meat based diet, and another which is herbivore based, and then an occasional live/frozen/freeze dried treat on occasion.

I have a problem with buying so much fish food, it all goes bad before I use it, I have no less then 10 different kinds right now, lol.

I'd use a good flake as their diet staple, and then feed them other things like bloodworm, daphnia (I found a freeze-dried daphnia by Hikiari that my fish are all loving), brine shrimp, etc. This is actually a good idea for any fish...
If you're worried about their color, check your lighting. Many fish wash out in very bright lights, so you may consider either lowering the lighting a bit, or getting some floating plants like salvinia or something.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

I'm not really "worried" about their colouration.
They are just new fish and seeing their colours brighten helps me to know that they are settling into my tank.

Cheers!

I mix flakes into a blend, for colour, vegetable, vitamin and protien content, and then offer brineshrimp and bloodworm too. The frozen live food makes about 40% of the diet, the rest is flake and ground pellet foods, they seem to do well, breed on it, and live a good long time. It does seem as if they prefer a little more animal protien than some, which makes sense for such a small fish with a high metabolism. Its more energy efficient.

My feeding régime (which has worked well for 11 years with the assorted inmates of the Panda Fun Palsce&#8482 has been to provide a big variety, and randomly select one of the flake type foods each time I feed.

Foods that I use are:

Live foods - Live Daphnia, live Bloodworm, and when I can obtain it, live Brine Shrimp (these are all mixed together into a huge live food smorgasbord so that the fishes can pick and choose the ones they want - it also gives the Pandas chance to get at the Bloodworms before any hungry Characins present steal them all );

Freeze dried foods - Tubifex cubes;

Flakes etc. - TetraMin, TetraRuby ColourPride, Tetra Pro Mixed (this has since been renamed TetraMin Pro), Tetra Pro Vegetable, Tetra Pro Colour, and when available, Hikari wafers (which for some reason recently are no longer available in the UK - sigh).

When the live food arrives, the fishes get their smorgasbord, then usually a feeding of one of the colour foods later on. Then I return to the random selection of flakes for their feedings, which occur in the case of flake feedings in accordance with the venerable Innes rule of 'small amounts often'. The adult fishes can be fed up to 5 times per day, but since each feeding is measured, there's precious little in the way of leftovers.

As for feeding things such as Hikari wafers, my technique is to break the wafers up into small pieces, then distribute the pieces about the aquarium using a spare piece of undergravel filter uplift tube to ensure that everyone gets a share.

My Pandas got their live food smorgasbord last night before I went to bed, and now they're frolicking like mad.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002