A balanced diet for your aquarium fish is essential to their survival. Most of the commercially available dry fish foods are almost always unbalanced. In many cases, the vitamin content will gradually decline at room temperature and since majority of the dry food for tropical fish commonly used will only keep for about three months, it is always advisable to buy fish-feeds in many small packs rather than in one large pack.

The feed could preferably be kept absolutely dry in a refrigerator. However, all fish appreciate a change of diet and will thank you for your consideration with more interesting behavior, better colors, and greater readiness to breed and better general well -being. This change of diet should be supplemented with live food; majority of which now come in irradiated freeze dried forms to make sure that they are disease free.

I will mention a few that could be found handy in some major aquarium shops and I will group them into two. And they are flake foods and freeze-dried foods.

Most popular and highly recommended brands are Aquarian®, Tetra®, and Wardley®. They are varying in cost and quality. Wardley is the least expensive among the three. However, the Aquarian and Tetra are richer in specialty flakes compare to Wardley.

You will also find freeze-dried foods available in aquarium stores. They are favorite foods for aquarium fish. They have single animal-ingredient like mosquito larvae, blood worms and Tubifex worm each. Aquarist should note that freeze-foods are not in themselves complete diet but they can be combine to flake food or other type of freeze-dried foods. We shall discuss more about Tubifex as a popular freeze-dried food.

TUBIFEX - This is a traditional favorite food relished by most fishes. They are small red worms that live at the bottom of streams and rivers particularly where large amounts of organic matter are present. Therefore, it is difficult for the aquarist to collect them life from their habitat. It is therefore preferable to buy Tubifex from pet shops where they are already clean, freeze-dried and concentrated into cube forms.

From personal experience, Tubifex tubes could probably be the most exciting feed to use for fishes. The cube can be stuck to the front inside wall of the aquarium. The fishes in the tank will immediately come forward and bit off pieces of worms excitedly until satisfied.