the female was being fed with the some of the same pellet i feed (not sure on what its called but the lfs uses it and sells it), no clue on what the male was fed as i got him from petsmart, but currently i feed several different types of pellets (hikari gold, the lfs pellet, sinking shrimp pellets, and sometimes broken up algae wafers) i also feed freeze dried shrimp every now and then and frozen brine shrimp, i feed 2x daily usually a little mixture of all the different pellets, they werent only ones in big tank as i have several grow outs in there right now but they are the only ones showing this which is why i separated them now, but iv had them for about 3-4 months now its just when i first got them i didnt really look for parasites