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I was looking through my TFH magazine i got in the mail yesterday and stumbled onto a couple of things i have questions about.
1-It said in the mag that you should not feed your Discus bloodworms all of the time. Only for a treat here and there. It said that it could leave to intestinal problems. How? Is it the same for other fish? I feed my fish bloodworms every night unless i have brine shrimp!
2-It also said that they reccomend not feeding cuccumber.I feed my clown plec and otos cuccumber about every other day. I am assuming that they are just saying that the peel and seeds are indigestible. ???????

I'm guessing that they say not to feed ONLY bloodworms because they aren't that nutritious. It's about the rough equivalent of feeding a kid ONLY pizza ALL of the time... the kid would like it, until he started suffering because of it...

You might want to try a mix of different frozen foods. Some of SFSB's frozen foods come mixed w/spirulana and stuff, you might want to give that a try

My guess is as good as yours on the cucumber... I haven't had problems feeding cukes before...

I have SanFransisco Bay Brand-does it have all that stuff in?

Once a week should do it, and in small amounts, unless you have dedicated insectivorous fish with very fast metabolisms. Its not so much the digestion issues you have to watch so much as the fatty deposits in the liver caused by being on a fatty diet.Thats the real killer. With discus especially, a varied diet is key to health, and being omnivorous rather than purely predatory they could do with a bit of roughage and a whole load of vitamins that would be missing from the all bloodworm diet. You can try a whole spectrum of granular foods (some discus being fussier than others about flake) and a whole range of frozen foods including various cichlid diets, and formulas specifically for discus, through to glassworm, blackworm, brineshrimp and so on.

On the cucumber front yep unless you have some really very large vegetarian fish, only the flesh of the cucumber will be eaten, and you will of course need to find a way to weigh it down. Organically grown cucumber is best, being grown in a slightly less hydroponic way, hence more nutritious, and much less likely to contain harmful pesticides.

As far as feeding. Using the same food all the time regardless will/could cause problems. A good mix of foods with special treats is extremly useful. If you have a look in My Profile you will see I use a huge variety of foods. I also have a set basic foods which I rotate every day.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

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Depending on the fish bloodworms can be basically too rich(too much fat, protein, and other nutrients) for feeding everyday. You'll have unhealthy fish. Brineshrimp on the other hand usually have very little nutrition. Both make better treats for some fish especially fish that are less carnivorous. Some fish though do best on bloodworms such as dwarf puffers. I prefer a frozen food that has a mix of ingredients and some vitamins added. There are several mixes for different species of fish. I also feed some other frozen foods like squid aside from the usual bloodworms and brineshrimp. Variety is good for all animals.

I'm not certain why you shouldn't feed cucumber except it's a rather watery vegetable and not very nutritious. My loaches and plecos love it as a fairly frequent treat and the yoyos especially go nuts for it.

Alright, it seems like bloodworms werent as good for my fish as i thought they were. How about a cycle of different foods for my fish.
Bloodworms one night, then micropellets(Hikari), then wafers(tropicmarin i think?)-
The wafers are actually flakes put into a skinny round shape that float longer.
I also feed hikari's sinking wafers every morning for my loaches. I add a slice of cuccumber on a lettuce clip every other night for my algae eaters. That will change soon since i am trying to grow algae on rocks in a little container with aquarium water. It just got sunny yesterday, so it should only be a few more days or so until i can harvest.
-Should i get a flake food or something to put into my proposed cycle?

The more varied the diet the better. You want to try and make up a food pyramid for the fish just as you would yourself. A good staple diet of high quality flakes/pellets for mornings, a colour/specialized food for mid day, and a treat/sinking for night that you would alternate so as not to give them too many treats.