Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping => General Fishkeeping Chat => Topic started by: Woodsie on June 20, 2020, 08:22:33 PM
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Hi, I'm new to the forum and loving it. I have just filled ion my fish details in the community creator and learnt a lot from there.
One thing I have just read is my 5 striped barbs ( i have just 3 but will be adding to them shortly. I've included a pic in case I'm wrong about the specie, again but I'm pretty confident this time) do not do well on dried flake food alone.
I do drop an algae pellet in every other day or so as I have a dwarf loach and a bristle nosed pleco in there too but I don't think that's what they mean.
I see there are loads of live, frozen and freeze dried foods out there.
I like the idea of the freeze dried as it seems easiest to store and I can get it online but is that the way to go?
If so are some kinds better than others?
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Live is better than frozen which is better than freeze dried - same as with human food :)
Live has a risk of 'bugs' coming in with the food, from disease to parasites.
Frozen has less risk, especially if you find a brand that's been gamma irradiated. Thaw in a tub of tank water before feeding it.
Freeze dried has little nutrition left in it.It also absorbs water and bulks up quite a lot. If it is put in the tank straight from the pack and the fish eat it within seconds, it can absorb water inside the fish and swell up causing damage. Always soak freeze dried food in a little tank water before feeding.
You can also cultivate your own brine shrimp to feed them. There are plenty of kits available for this. And a lot of people cultivate their own daphnia.
As a side issue, loaches are carnivores; yours will do better with a meat/fish based sinking pellet. (And a few more loaches of the same species as they are shoaling fish).
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Your Barbs are Desmopuntius hexazona. Most of the Barbs sold as D. pentazona (five banded Barb) are actually D. hexazona. They both require the same care.
Frozen is much better than freeze dried, as Sue has already said. The frozen blister packs are very easy and quite ‘clean’ to use.
Live food bought from a shop in those little bags can be of very dubious quality, especially if it has sat around for a few days. You can grow some of your own though. Just leave a bucket of water outside and you’ll get mosquito larvae, or add a bag of daphnia or cyclops and leave the bucket in the sun, or add an occasional pinch of [various things work] to feed them and keep them going.
All these foods can be fed around a good staple diet. As a staple diet there’s nothing wrong with a good brand of flake.
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I find frozen bloodworm seems to be enjoyed by the majority of my gang, and is quite easy to use.
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For little Barbs I’d get bloodworm, brine shrimp, daphnia, cyclops, any of the other ‘worms’ (glassworm, white or black mosquito larvae - all insect larvae similar to bloodworm). They’ll also love lobster eggs if you can find them (not every brand has them).
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:)Thanks so much all, that is really helpful info'. The fresh, frozen dried order makes perfect sense. But like Hampalong I don't like the look of the little bags in shops. I'm going to look into growing my own. Could be fun but I'll seek out some frozen ones next time i'm in my local shop.
I am intending to get a few more fish. Then current inhabitants are the survivors of a leaking tank a while back. They've been swapped into two V small tanks for a while and then into the 245. Not all of them made it sadly.
Interestingly I got the loach form Haslemere Aquatics and specifically asked if they were OK as solo fish and was told yes. I have had a few people tell me otherwise since so I'll seek out a couple of mates for him/her. I think I may also stick to my independent shop in future and avoid the big boys.
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Fish shops are the worst place for advice, unfortunately. Most of the people who work in them don't know anything about fish, or they don't care and will say anything to make a sale or their knowledge is very out of date.
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Get at least 5 more loaches, preferably more if you have room. In most schooling fish, including these, keeping 2 or 3 usually just causes fighting and bullying.
https://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/ambastaia-sidthimunki/
”Ambastaia spp. are gregarious and appear to form complex social hierarchies. They should be maintained in groups of at least 5 or 6 specimens, preferably 10 or more. When kept singly they can become withdrawn or aggressive towards similarly-shaped fishes, and if only a pair or trio are purchased the dominant individual may stress the other(s) to the extent that they stop feeding..”