Archer fish diet

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I've been told by many people that especially for archers, who have such a varried diet that the more different things it eats (if thats proper english ;)) the better.

Insects are great that they are high in protein. Having just found out to make mine shoot - I will be feeding him more crickets and krill mostly in the future.
 
Mine would eat anything that fell in the tank lol- even live shrimps which I bought as an experiment to see if they would leave them be in order to let them clean the tank a bit (all those bits of cricket lol) but no gone in a flash...
I fed mine mostly live crickets; but they also had frozen foods (blood worms, brine shrimp etc.) and flakes now and then... lol once when I went away for a few days I left an automatic flake feeder on; I came back to find a dried mush instead of flakes; seemed they has got food from it once or twice and decided to have a go at shooting some flakes down themselves lol
 
mine started on 100% crickets, but i have weened him onto fd krill, and he only gets crickets on occasion. I am thinking about starting him on meal worms if i can get them up here.
 
Mine has started to eat just about anything that I offer it pellets, meal worms, crickets, moths, earth worms.
 
I don't think a diet of mainly crickets is so good, though I can't really back that up. I don't think their ability to shoot down insects necessarily makes them primarily insectavores. I beleive their diet is quite varied in the wild.

I have kept them for about ten years. Insects are the small minority of my archers' diet. They mainly survive on a good staple of two or three varieties of pellets (cichclid, carnivore, general, etc) and a variety of live/frozen as available.

You can't go wrong with earth worms (I have started compost piles at my last 4 homes for just this reason), fresh shrimp from the grocer (lay flat in a large ziplock with just enough water to cover the shrimp, and freeze. break it off with a hammer as needed), and insects of opportunity.

Check out my thread in the photo lounge linked below for some pics of my beauts!!
 
I also, while having no true evidence to back this theory up, do not think a pure 100% diet of crickets is the best thing for them. I can't imagine its bad mind you, I just feel that by giving them a single item, there might be some dietary need that is being overlooked.

I think it is best to vary their diet to make it more close to what they would eat in the wild.

Again mine also get an assortment of roughly:
20% flake food
20% frozen Krill / live ghost shrimp
15% crickets (may bring that up)
20% carnivore pellets (sinking and floating)
20% blood worms
10% red worms/earth worms

This isn't THE diet for them, its basically what I feed them... however I believe its a pretty healthy and varied diet for them.
 
Daeorn;1168812; said:
Mine eat tropical flakes. They also eat carnivore pellets, crickets, blood worms/brineshrimp/prawn which the other fish eat.

But its mostly crickets and flakes.

I hear moths are a no no because sometimes they carry a slight toxin in their wings, but I'd like if someone confirmed or denied that.

I've been told the more varried the diet the better, since they eat such a range of different foods in the wild.


Depends on the type of moth, gray millers work fine. cockroaches also work. A freind used to feed his mainly juvenile halfbeaks.
 
I wonder if this is a normal behaviour of archer fish, since my archer fish have been eating live guppies which was meant for my freshwater moray.But he have eaten a mosquito that flew by his tank today
 
My 7 archers eat:

80% freeze-dried krill
10% crickets
10% tetra-min flake food

They definitely like the balanced diet - coloration would get worse if I was only feeding them tetra-min, or the krill. Ideally I'd like it to be 33/33/33, but I just don't get the chance to buy crickets that often.
 
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