Food Growth Formula

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Clean water (filtration and water changes), a quality and balanced staple food with quality protein, complete amino acid profile, and other nutritive factors that affect growth. Don't overfeed-- might sound counter-intuitive, but if you do some aquaculture/science reading, fish have an optimal range of feed and protein levels (varying somewhat by species) with diminishing results if you get too far out of their range-- or your fish might grow fast but die younger than they should. It's not as simple as quantity of food consumed equals quantity of growth.

In some fish I've found mysis shrimp (I use freeze dried) added to a good quality flake or pellet to be a good growth food.
 
And regarding meat-- as in beef heart, etc-- I'm on the side of the professional observation below (bold emphasis by the original author):
Nutrition article
Although still fed to fish and often part of many homemade fish food recipes, Beef Heart is a food source that should be used very sparingly.
Although many carnivorous fish enjoy it and it may be a good way to kick start growth in juvenile fish, excessive long term use can add stress to the fish' digestive tract and kidneys, thus lowering resistance to disease and shortening lifespan (which I noted in some side by side fish food comparisons in the 1980s where Oscar Fish that were fed a diet primarily of Beef Heart had clearly shorter life spans and were more prone to infections or other problems such as HITH).

Although lower in fats than most warm blooded animal meats, Beef Heart is still about 18% Saturated Fat. These fats are very difficult for fish to process these fats, especially older fish.

...As well the amino acids (which make up proteins) are not ones that are easily utilized by fish.
Click to expand...

People will debate pros and cons of beef heart endlessly and I have my own opinions on it, but judge for yourself. What I know is that it's not a requirement to grow fish, even those typically judged as carnivorous; ime there are other, better foods than beef heart to get your fish to grow well.
 
One major thing that often gets overlooked.... Stress. Fish that are constantly beat on tend to grow more slowly and have a harder time competing for food at feed time.

Stress can slow a fishes growth quite a bit.


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neutrino said:
And regarding meat-- as in beef heart, etc-- I'm on the side of the professional observation below (bold emphasis by the original author):
Nutrition article


People will debate pros and cons of beef heart endlessly and I have my own opinions on it, but judge for yourself. What I know is that it's not a requirement to grow fish, even those typically judged as carnivorous; ime there are other, better foods than beef heart to get your fish to grow well.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for that very informative source! :) This helps greatly because the source conveys a wide variety of different foods to consider! Do you feel beef heart will kick-start the growth of fish at least temporarily, even if the fish is already a year old or older? I would not ever consider the permanent use of using this as a primary source, I was just wondering about this for temporarily use for a couple inches in length.


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Jc1119 said:
One major thing that often gets overlooked.... Stress. Fish that are constantly beat on tend to grow more slowly and have a harder time competing for food at feed time.

Stress can slow a fishes growth quite a bit.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
Click to expand...

+1 Yeah, that is another important influence! Thank you for the suggestion. ;) Regarding the Festae in your avatar, what do you feed him primarily?


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