Flowerhorn Fish is an easy breed when it comes to feeding. You know that this fish eats anything you drop into the tank as they are not fussy eaters. But have you ever seen a Flowerhorn eat live fish? Or have you tried feeding them live?
Yes, your Flowerhorn fish eat live fish like minnows, krill, crawfish, small cichlids, baby guppies, and any other small fish that can cross your mind. These fish will eat any smaller fish that will fit in their mouth without difficulty. Hence, it is best to avoid smaller fish as a flowerhorn tankmate.
The information above is quite less if you are in a dilemma about whether your Flowerhorn is okay with eating live fish. You can figure it out in detail after reading the article. Make sure you read the article till the end. Let’s proceed!
Does Flowerhorn Eat Live Fish?
Well, it’s a yes to some extent and no to the other half. Flowerhorn is known to eat anything present in their proximity.
Live fish are the source of high protein and numerous vitamins and minerals essential to your Flowerhorn.
Flowerhorn is not a picky eater and consumes anything dropped in the tank; hence they love to consume live fish that can easily fit inside their mouth.
Their love for live fish is because of the taste and flavor that exquisitely leaves a unique sensation in them.
Flowerhorn enjoys live fish that are fresh and juicy and are not processed and packaged, which imparts a different taste to the fullest.
Despite this, live fish are quite risky to feed as they are prone to parasitic infections. Hence ensuring their quality and source, you can feed your Flowerhorn live fish as a treat once or twice a week but not as a staple.
What Are The Types Of Live Fish Your Flowerhorn Fish Eat?
Flowerhorn loves meaty items more than veggies or fruits with a meat-loving gut. Thus, it’s pretty easy to select food for your beloved Flowerhorn.
Coming back to the types of live fish you can give to your fish, you need to ensure the size of your fish and feeder fish.
In general, you have to feed smaller fish in size than your Flowerhorn. This is because the size matters while feeding live fish to your Flowerhorn.
Your Flowerhorn is aggressive and shows aggressiveness to any tank mate, or live fish dropped in the aquarium.
The fight begins as soon as your Flowerhorn sees any other organism in its area: tank. You have to mind the size of feeder fish if you dont want to lose your Flowerhorn.
Thus you can feed small live fish like krill, crawfish, minnows, etc. Generalizing the whole thing, you have to feed smaller fish that are smaller in size than your Flowerhorn.
List Of Live Fish That Flowerhorn Fish Eat
I know you will always have a second thought while choosing a tank mate for flowerhorn if I leave you in a cliffhanger without listing all the fish that will turn into snacks for this big fish.
Here are the fish that will unintentionally travel the gut area of flowerhorn as its lunch if you are not alert enough:
- Krill
- Crawfish
- Minnows
- Guppies
- Small Tetras
- Molly fish
- Platy Fish
- Zebra Danios, etc.
Basically, your flowerhorn will eat any fish that can fit in its mouth. It might not always start with the intentional craving, but they will chew up all the fish that are smaller in size.
How Often Can I Feed Live Fish To Flowerhorn?
Raising flowerhorn for a long time, I concluded that Flowerhorn loves to have live fish. Furthermore, Flowerhorn loves to show aggressiveness to the particular live fish dropped in the tank.
This makes your Flowerhornn more active and starts chasing and showing more aggression to the feeder fish. This scenario is worth watching.
But at the same time, the feeder fishes are produced in a huge quantity, and their quality is often low.
Low in the sense that they might contain parasitic infections and diseases. The Flowerhorn, while devouring this fish, might end up hosting the parasites already present in those feeding fish.
You need to make sure that you buy such feeder fish from an authentic pet store and good quality.
Thus, I recommend you to feed live fish rarely. Occasional introduction of these fish might not create many problems for your Flowerhorn and aid the variety to the diet, but feeding them daily is not quite recommended. It would help if you did not consider live fish as a staple diet for your Flowerhorn.
What Are The Benefits Of Feeding Live Fish To Flowerhorn?
Live fish are the favorite food of your Flowerhorn. Your Flowerhorn loves to play with the prey and show its aggressiveness before gulping. Besides this fun purpose, live fish has enormous benefits to your Flowerhorn.
I have mentioned some of the advantages of feeding live fish to your fish. So let’s have a look at it.
- Live fish has more nutritional content than commercialized products.
- Your Flowerhorn loves the natural flavor and taste of live fish.
- Live fish breaks the chain of monotonous diets and gives variety.
- Nutrients like vitamin A and D are present in live fish, which are lost during the processing of commercialized fish food.
- If you are giving some supplements to your fish, live fish are an essential part of the digestion of the supplement: they help in absorption.
- Feeding live fish will help the Flowerhorn attain its potential size, good health, and quality of life.
- Live fish are richer in proteins, vitamins, and other minerals.
- Ultimately live fish makes your Flowerhorn happy and contented.
What Are The Disadvantages Of Feeding Live Fish?
Despite having an enormous benefit, live fish do possess some disadvantages. You need to ensure that the live fish you are feeding is not putting your Flowerhorn at risk.
I have jotted down some of the disadvantages your flowerhorn might encounter after eating live fish. So let’s have a glance at it.
- Live fish are comparatively expensive in comparison to other commercial food.
- There is a high risk of disease transmission through live fish. Parasites hosting feeder fish directly enter the Flowerhorn once they eat live fish.
- Quality live fish are difficult to find. Therefore, you have to allocate more time and energy in search of live fish.
- The shelf life of live fish is low compared to commercial pellets and frozen fish.
- You need to take care of feeder fish when you grow them independently. This becomes tedious.
What Are The Risks In Feeding Your Flowerhorn Live Fish?
Well, it’s a yes, to some extent. However, feeding live fish to your Flowerhorn brought from an unauthorized shop or found locally might host pathogens and bacteria that directly harm your Flowerhorn.
We can’t judge through our eyes whether the live fish we are feeding to our Flowerhorn is free from bacteria and parasites. This will put both you and your fish in danger.
Myself going through a similar situation and losing my Flowerhorn through parasitic infection; I genuinely suggest you buy live fish from the authorized fish shop.
In contradiction to the above point, you can feed the fry and small fish that you have in your tank that you raised.
There is no doubt that you take care of your fish and fry in the tank; you even make sure that your tank is free from infestation.
Thus, feeding those live fish does not harm your Flowerhorn and poses no risk. Hence I strongly recommend feeding your pet some good fish with no infestations.
Can You Feed Live Fish To Flowerhorn Fry?
Your flowerhorn fry needs much care and nurture as they are in the phase of rapid growth. You should provide more nutritious food that helps them develop faster.
Live foods are the best source of nutrients for the fries as they are not yet ready for the pellets to consume. In addition, these foods are rich in proteins and other essential nutrients such as minerals and vitamins essential for your Flowerhorn. Thus, you have to feed live foods to your fry.
But talking about live fish, they are quite large compared to fry, which is difficult to feed. Moreover, these feeder fish can easily transmit parasites that are not worth feeding to fry as they are at a vulnerable stage.
Despite live fish, live foods like brine shrimp, mosquito larvae, daphnia, etc., are some of the highly nutritious food that helps your fry to develop rapidly.
The commercial foods that you can feed are:
- Ocean Nutrition Instant Baby Brine Shrimp 0.7-Ounces (20 Grams) Jar
- Omega One Freeze-Dried Blood Worms, 0.96 oz
- 200 Live Daphnia by Aqua L’amour
- Hikari Bio-Pure Freeze Dried Daphnia for Pets, 0.42-Ounce
- Hikari Tubifex Worms Fish Food (0.7 oz.) [Set of 2]
How Can You Feed Live Fish To Flowerhorn?
Live fish are more palatable, which is your Flowerhorn’s one of the favorites. Flowerhorn devours those fish in any form. But you need to take care of the following notes if you want to omit all the risks resulting from feeding a live fish. Preliminary preparations for live fish are not that lengthy and boring. Thus you and your Flowerhorn will enjoy live fish: serving and eating.
I have listed how to feed live fish to your Flowerhorn in the following points. Let’s proceed!!
- Firstly, you have to bring live fish from an authentic pet store that sells good quality live fish. Ensure the live fish is not reared with other fish with parasitic infections.
- You even can cultivate the live fish on your own in clean and contamination-free water.
- Secondly, you need to clean the fish properly by removing waste and dirt present on the surface of the fish body.
- The most important step is to check thoroughly if the feeder fish has any parasitic infection.
- After that, you need to make sure the size of the live fish you will put into the tank is comparatively smaller than the flowerhorn.
- You also should ensure the feeder fish is easily swallowed by your Flowerhorn: the ratio of mouth size of your Flowerhorn and feeder fish are equal.
FAQs
Does Flowerhorn Eat Pellets?
Of course, yes! Your Flowerhorn loves pellets to have as food. Pellets are easy to swallow and contain every nutrient in a balanced form as per the needs of your Flowerhorn. Both you and your Flowerhorn are benefitted from the pellets. It is less time consuming to prepare for you and
Does Flowerhorn Eat Fruits?
In general, it’s a “Yes.” Flowerhorn loves to have fruits. Therefore, your fish consumes a wide variety of Fruits.
Mangoes, apples, bananas, and melons are some of the fruits your Flowerhorn eats happily. But it would help if you made sure what are the favorites among all.
Although Flowerhorns are not that picky and eat every kind of fruit, in case they do not show interest, then you have to figure it out.
Some Flowerhornn might dislike some fruits. And while trying to feed that particular fruit might only contaminate the tank.
So you need to make a trial with a couple of fruits and develop an idea about the preferences of your particular fish.
Does Flowerhorn Eat Frozen foods?
Yes! Flowerhorn is omnivores, meaning they eat both frozen and normal meat and veggies. So feeding flowerhorn meat is an essential part of a diet. Your Flowerhorn devours frozen and fresh meat.
Can flowerhorn eat cucumber? Find out here. Or is algae the most beneficial food source?
You might have faced a real problem while feeding raw and fresh meat-based food. It is time-consuming and boring as well.
Thus, you can prepare a whole portion for about a week and freeze them in the freezer. Or the easiest idea is to buy frozen food for fish from the supermarket and feed them accordingly.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I suggest you feed live fish rarely as a treat to your Flowerhorn. Despite having the best nutritional values, it has the chance of transmitting parasitic infections to your Flowerhorn. Thus, I recommend you to buy live fish from the authentic fish store, which provides quality fish. You are the one who is responsible for taking care of flowerhorn basic needs. So, remember, it enjoys and loves live fish, but that does not mean you feed them regularly. Please dont make these live fish a staple diet for your Flowerhorn.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article. All the best for fish keeping!