Feeding without copper

[HumanArtRebel1020]

Hello,

 

I have a ten gallon setup that contains my shrimp along with 1 inch julii catfish And other fish. I need food for my catfish but im having a hard time finding something good quality without copper in it . Anybody over come this or have knowledge about good food brands  and choices for feeding my julii and rabbit snails ??  please lmk  immediately, thanks.

[Revaria]

It depends how high quality do you want to go and what are you looking for the food to do to the fish as foods can induce breeding, bring out color or for general nutrition? Bloodworms make a fine meal for fish, cories and shrimp, so does repashy as it will sink allowing your fish to just pick at it and both are high quality and expensive in the long run. Currently I feed my fish kens vegetable flake, and a protein flake, the breeders get brine shrimp, daphnia and bloodworms as well, while my otos get repashy and my shrimp and snails get regular fish flakes and mixed frozen vegetables or canned. For me selecting good foods is about getting that mix of vegetables and protein in addition to a high quality ingredient list. On the ingredient lists my favorite things to see are insect meal (or any insects the current trend is black soldier fly), various vegetables (carrot, peas, alfalfa, etc), spirulina, brine shrimp, blood worms, whole fish/shrimp/krill meals. I also try to keep my ingredients lists short, and to avoid certain foods that contain a lot of corn, potato starch and sometimes wheat (sometimes cause I believe all floating pellets use wheat) and free from certain preservatives that may be potentially toxic if possible. 

 

If you are asking for specific foods I recommend, I recommend golden pearls as they have a high amount of brine shrimp in them, repashy as its high quality, new life spectrum foods for the same reason, sera o nip and sera spirulina tabs if you have a lot of fish, fluvals new bug bites and I have heard good things about the new northfin foods. In general a good rule of thumb is to replace fish food every few months as it is food and food does spoil; I try to keep mine in air tight lids, shielded from light and moisture and that as long as your fish and shrimp are breeding that means they are happy regardless of what you are feeding them. Finally no matter how good the fish food is if the fish refuse to eat it, then its automatically no good. Some fish refuse pellets, while others refuse flake and mostly eat live foods; if you have too, you may have to train your fish to eat the food and if you can't, just feed it to the shrimp and snails as they will literally eat anything.

[HumanArtRebel1020]

i tried flakes with him hes not interested, or in home made food from somebody. he likes white worms but I have a hard time culturing them. Im weary of feeding frozen worms like that because parasites. Looking for something high quality aka a food with the best necessary ingredients and high amount of nutrients. wafer like maybe or a lot of WW.

[barvinok]

Omega One veggie round and freshwater flakes have necessary ingredients and no copper.

[Revaria]

On 6/29/2018 at 5:36 PM, HumanArtRebel1020 said:

i tried flakes with him hes not interested, or in home made food from somebody. he likes white worms but I have a hard time culturing them. Im weary of feeding frozen worms like that because parasites. Looking for something high quality aka a food with the best necessary ingredients and high amount of nutrients. wafer like maybe or a lot of WW.

 

Well from my experience blood worms are generally very healthy for fish and barely any fish will reject them, so you can guarantee your fish is eating as long as they will probably go crazy over bloodworms. Another idea would be to place your cory in a separate tank, feed them flake food, or your other main food of choice until they get used to that as their main meal then re-add them to the main aquarium, you can also add other corys to your tank which will allow them to compete with each other for food making them more active, and if 1 cory eats the food it will cause the other corys to start accepting that food as well. And I just want to make sure that you are talking about the Julii Corydora correct?

[HumanArtRebel1020]

Yes i am ! So i wound up ordering mini cubes blood worms and mini cubes spirulina and brine. Also a blood worm flat pack which is so large i didnt think it would be this large . He refused this at first because when i first got him i fed him live WW. He ate three so im sure these will work for him soon.

[Revaria]

Sounds good, eventually you can start soaking some food in the water of the blood worms for a few minutes prior to feeding to give them the scent/ flavor of the bloodworms and the cory may try out the food as well; if it works eventually you can just stop soaking and feed the flakes normally. And a blood worm flat pack is pretty large, but some of us go through them pretty fast if you have a lot of tanks; in addition a lot of those blood worms is just ice/water weight.