Well been doing my own little research on pellet trained bass and live feeder bass. I have bought countless cichla and as much as I hate to say it but for now on I will feed more live and real raw meat. (Shrimp, Tilapia) no more pellets for me... Sucks and going to be really expensive and I will definitely have to get rid of OVER half of my collection... But I would rather have a couple super stunning show piece cichla then a bunch of mediocre cichla. I am going to clear all my larger cichla and starting over with a few hand selected pieces.
Cichla Sp. pellet vs. live
- Thread starter RuckusLV
- Start date
What brought this all about? Why not switch what you have back over to live?
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I do know that while in "hunting" mode, their colors are a lot better. Its in their nature to hunt as a carnivore. Yall know we love fish a lot, and in our home aquaria, we try to replicated their natural environment, why not their diet as well? IMHO, I think its important they get live once in a while to keep them "wild"
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http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=232146 I was interested, did some looking and found this discussion on the subject
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Having kept all the different species and have had great success breeding them as well, I think the key to having a happy and healthy cichla is to give it a varied diet. If you have a tank of full grown mature bass, it is almost impossible to feed them as much as they would love to eat every day (but it sure is fun to try). In my experience, I try to feed them as varied of a diet as possible with the staple of their diet being pellets with the majority being massivoire and then add hikari bio gold and hikari cichlid staple. I feed this to them every day. Here is my dilemma, although pellets have great nutritional value, I feel that it doesn't fill them up as much. I could easily throw a 2.2 pound bag of massiviore into my tank and it would be gone in a minute, this isn't an economical idea though. To combat this and to vary their diet, I feed them some type of actual fish every other day or so. I will feed them anything, tilapia, salmon, tuna, flounder, striped bass, blue fish, bunker, spearing, shrimp. You name it and I feed it to my bass. I also have no problem feeding them some steak or chicken scraps on the rare occasion. About once every two weeks I will feed them a massive feeding with this "real" food. I feed them till they don't eat any more. I have noticed that after I do this, the next day or so they will not want to eat. They will eat a few pellets but they don't go crazy and I try not to feed them much as I notice a small spick in my ammonia the day after. I will also feed them live when I a get some, but it isn't that often.