One day while sitting on the couch with a bowl of noodles, staring at my aquarium, I wondered – “Am I adequately feeding my Flowerhorn?”. I even thought about how often my Flowerhorn fish needs food to meet its caloric requirement for the day? Watching your pet eat the food indeed fills your heart with joy, and you like to offer food more often. Is this healthy? Exactly how often should you feed your Flowerhorn?
You can feed your flowerhorn three times a day while alerting the portion size and time gap between two meals. In addition to this, skip feed for a day in a week which will help clear the digestive tract of your Flowerhorn.
The quantity and caloric size too affect the size and health. However, flowerhorn never says ‘NO’ to food; thus, it’s your responsibility to feed the actual amount of food meeting the nutritional requirements.
Here, in this article, I will share my experience regarding the feeding pattern of my Flowerhorn. Hope my experience helps you while feeding your Flowerhorn. Let’s dive into details now.
How Often Should You Feed Flowerhorn?
The appetite of the Flowerhorn seems big, but the real concern is – Does my Flowerhorn have that big appetite as its size? It’s an important topic to discuss.
Well, every new parent of Flowerhorn encounters this sort of query. First, they seem perplexed to figure out how vigorous the appetite is? Then, similarly, they stumble more on questions such as: How often should I feed Flowerhorn?
No matter how big or small the appetite is, the first thing one should consider before feeding is the portion of the meal and its timing.
When you meet these two aspects, there is no doubt your Flowerhorn attains satiety and health at once.
I have tried to solve some of the common queries regarding the feed of the Flowerhorn. So let’s have a glance at it.
Feed Per Day
Do not feed your beloved Flowerhorn more than three times a day. Some people even suggest twice feeding, but the small and frequent feeding is more beneficial. Hence, three feeds with an adequate gap of 8-hour each are more effective.
Feed Per Week
Experts suggest skipping a day per week helps in the digestion of Flowerhorn. A day fast provides Flowerhorn’s digestive system a break. This helps resolve digestion issues faced by your pet throughout the week. So you can feed six days a week, skipping a day of your choice.
When To Feed Your Flowerhorn?
It becomes easy to feed your Flowerhorn if you schedule the 8 hours gap at your convenience.
If you are an early morning person, you can feed at 5 am 1 pm, and the last one at 9 pm before shifting yourself to the bed.
If you are a late-night enthusiast, you can just shift the timing to 9 am, 5 pm, and 1 am. You can figure out the timing as per your comfort.
What Happens If You Are Out Of Town Urgently?
If you are a Flowerhorn parent, you are lucky enough to have such a strong pet. Unlike other fish who can not survive more than a week, your Flowerhorn can tackle extreme food scarcity and survive for 14 days to a month.
Though your pet might feel hungry, it can metabolize fat from its body to cope with the extraneous situation. Thus, you don’t need to worry about such but be mindful to return home soon.
Mentioning this fact, I am not suggesting you leave your pet hungry for days and weeks, or a month. I am just stating some research-based evidence where Flowerhorn even survived up to a month without food.
Please don’t let your Flowerhorn starve for food even though you are out of town. You can always request your flatmate or the neighbor to take care of your pet during an emergency.
Why Should You Feed Flowerhorn This Often?
Well, both plants and animals require food for their growth and development. Secondly, they need to absorb nutrients from food to receive energy for their routine activities. Despite all these prioritized needs, your Flowerhorn especially needs food for the vibrant colors – upon which one easily falls.
I am listing out why you need to feed a Flowerhorn often in detail.
Growth and Development
Like all the living creatures in the world, Flowerhorn grows over time. Growth and development need energy; it comes from the feed you supply, either in pellets or wholesome food. The main beauty of the Flowerhorn is its horn on the head, which increases in size after a quality diet.
For Enhancement Of Color
The center of attraction, Flowerhorn, possesses the vibrant color it radiates. The striking color captivates everyone and urges one to shower infinite love. Thus, a proper diet helps in growth and development and aids in the beauty of your beloved Flowerhorn.
To Support Their Reproduction
Flowerhorn requires a lot of energy to produce good quality and healthy eggs. Lack of food can hinder their egg-producing capacity.
So, you need to provide them with proper adequate food to strengthen their egg-producing capacity and produce healthy eggs and fry.
What To Feed Your Flowerhorn?
Flowerhorn is an omnivore and thus eats both plant-based and animal-based food. Your Flowerhorn swallows everything you drop into the tank in no time. Consequently, they are famous as “Greedy Eaters.”
If you are a new parent, be careful while feeding. You should provide protein-rich food along with a variety of foods.
As the food you provide is the only source of nutrition for the fish, proper quantity and quality of foods are recommended. The following are some of the foods you can feed your Flowerhorn.
Plant-Based Diet
Although Flowerhorn is fond of non-vegetarian foods, you need to feed them a small amount of vegetarian diet. This helps strengthen the natural characteristics of their eggs and aid fiber to the diet.
Additionally, Flowerhorn gets a lot of vitamins and minerals from plant-based foods that are not present in animal-based foods. Some of these foods include:
- Peas (no shell)
- Small and thin cucumber slices
- Finely shredded lettuce
- Thin slices of Zucchini
Animal Based diet
There’s no hard and fast rule that you give live foods to Flowerhorn. Unlike other fishes, Flowerhorn loves sun-dried and even frozen foods. Frozen bloodworms and shrimps enhance the colors of this fish.
Some animal-based foods that are either live or sundried/ frozen are:
- Crickets
- Grasshoppers
- Bloodworms
- Shrimps
- Fish flakes
- Anchovies
- Shredded salmon
- Finely cut herring fish
Pellets
Apart from these mentioned, the easy way to feed your Flowerhorn is to feed them pellets available at stores online or offline.
These pellets are compact versions of feed, compiling every nutrient required for the smooth development of Flowerhorn.
This is effective enough to provide a wholesome and quality diet. In addition, the staple pallet also provides micronutrients and vitamins.
To avoid digestive problems, you need to soak the pellets in aquarium water a minute before feeding.
- Omega One Super Color Floating Cichlid Pellets, Large, 6 oz x1
- Northfin Cichlid Pellets, which consist of plenty of nitrogen
- Fluval Bug Bites Cichlid Fish Food, Pellets for Medium to Large Sized Fish, 3.53 oz., A6581
- New Life Spectrum Thera-A Large
Algae
Rather than veggies and meat-based products and pellets for your Flowerhorn, you can even introduce algae wafers and flakes.
These wafers and flakes are highly nutritious and contain essential components essential for the growth and development of Flowerhorn.
You can easily find some commercial flakes and wafers available on amazon. I will recommend you some of them below:
Algae Wafers
Algae Flakes
What Not To Feed Your Flowerhorn?
Though omnivorous, you should not give mammal meats and their products to Flowerhorns. Mammals’ meats include beef, mutton, chicken, or anything that cannot swim. In addition, mammal meats can cause serious digestive problems.
Feeding live food is unsafe and not recommended by several fish keepers. Therefore, do not give live foods from unknown unsafe sources to Flowerhorn. However, living foods from safe sources have enormous benefits and are recommended.
Avoid supplements that aren’t found in nature that temporarily enhance the fish’s looks. In addition, ingredients such as steroids and hormones will harm the fish’s internal organs.
Points To Remember While Feeding Your Flowerhorn
Feeding the Flowerhorn is simple as it eats living and frozen foods and pellets. The good part is the fish has a good appetite. However, you need to consider some points while feeding.
- To maintain storage temperature, read the direction and ingredients given on the packaged food (frozen/sundried).
- Remember to thaw the frozen food to avoid digestive tract injury.
- Bring live foods from a safe source to ensure Flowerhorn’s safety from parasitic invasion.
- Balanced diet
How Much Should You Feed Your Flowerhorn?
The amount varies depending on the variety of Flowerhorn, type of food, age, and size. However, the main determining factor is the size of the fish.
The general rule is “One pellet for each 1-inch body length and less than 1-inch body diameter.”
For instance: You must give them three pellets per feed to a fish of 3 inches in length and a diameter of 0.55 inches.
If your Flowerhorn’s body diameter is beyond 1 inch, kindly double the number of pellets.
For instance: A fish with a body length of 3 inches and a diameter of 1.05 inches needs six pallets per feed.
A good rule for newbie parents: provide enough food for 20-40 seconds.
What Happens If You Overfeed Flowerhorn?
Flowerhorn doesn’t encounter diseases more often, unlike other fish breeds. But if the diet is inadequate or in excess and the tank is dirty, they are prone to several infections and diseases. So let’s discuss the outcomes of overfeeding.
Encounters Infection
Overfeeding Flowerhorn lowers immune symptoms resulting in Hexamita infection. It is also known as a hole in the head disease. This infection might result in HLLE (Head and Lateral Line Erosion) disease, where parasites invade the head of the fish.
Another common infection is “Ich,” which results from bad rearing practices. It is marked by small white spots on the skin and fins. Thus, rearing practices such as maintaining aquarium hygiene and overfeeding and underfeeding must be taken care of.
Production Of Foul Smell
Some missed food while overfeeding gets collected at the base of the aquarium resulting in a foul smell. This leads to the accumulation of excess ammonia, nitrate, and nitrites. Flowerhorns are too sensitive to these compounds, more than other fish. Thus, a small and frequent meal is important to remain far from these nitrogenous compounds.
An extra tip: How to overcome these compounds?
Overfeeding is one of the causes that contaminate the water in the tank due to the high amount of excretion. Therefore, you need to change the water every week even though it seems clear.
Similarly, the beneficial bacteria present in the aquarium filter will perform the aquarium nitrogen cycle and convert harmful ammonia into essential nitrate. So, make sure you have a good quality filter that won’t fail within a few months.
Common Digestive Problems Of Flowerhorn
The most common digestive problems faced by your Flowerhorn are impaction and bloating. Their voracious appetite is the main cause of these problems. To avoid these problems, the caretakers of fish need to control the food being provided.
Impaction
This is a digestive disorder where it is hard to excrete body waste. This results in bodily distress, awkward movements, and sluggishness. Impaction might be problematic to your Flowerhorn as this impacts swimming problems. This is due to the lack of dietary fibers in food. To avoid this, the caregivers can provide a vegetarian diet.
Bloating
Bloating is caused by a high level of nitrates or ammonia, a drop in temperature, and overfeeding. Overfeeding will not cause the fish to bloat but will cause the fish to defecate more. This results in a high ammonia level in the tank, thus resulting in bloating. Briefly, concluding that overfeeding indirectly results in bloating.
FAQs
I have collected some more queries related to Flowerhorn, hoping that you guys find this helpful enough. So let’s have a glance at these.
How Long Can A Flowerhorn Go Without Food?
Flowerhorn can go for 14 days to a month without food. After that, it might decrease in size, aggressiveness might increase, and color may fade, but your Flowerhorn is strong enough to combat the extreme situation and can survive for that long period.
How Do You Know That Your Flowerhorn Is Hungry?
Flowerhorn shows abnormal activities like waiting at the top of the aquarium, being aggressive, digging the substrate in search of food, and lacking activeness when hungry. When you see these hunger cues, make sure you feed your pet.
What Is The Best Food For Flowerhorn?
The Flowerhorn food mentioned below is solely based on my personal preference. You can try these and find out which is your Flowerhorn’s personal favorite. Some commercially available pellets are:
- Omega One Freeze-dried Krill
- Omega One Super Color Floating Cichlid Pellets, Large, 6 oz x1
- Northfin Cichlid Pellets, which consist of plenty of nitrogen
- Fluval Bug Bites Cichlid Fish Food, Pellets for Medium to Large Sized Fish, 3.53 oz., A6581
- New Life Spectrum Thera-A Large
Why Does Your Flowerhorn Have A Head Hump?
Flowerhorn is unique because of the head hump. The Head hump is also known as a nuchal hump or the Kok. Kok helps Flowerhorn to recognize the species. The hump also aids in hydrodynamics and anti-predation. The hump especially plays a role during breeding and helps in mechanical advantage.
Conclusion
Feeding Flowerhorn doesn’t only include providing food but covers a wide range like how, when, and what to feed? Being a parent, your responsibility multiplies towards another life. The life of whom you care about. Thus, proper care and adequate knowledge are necessary for Flowerhorn parents to prevent overfeeding, infection, and diseased conditions and maintain the fish’s vivid appearance.
Hope this article addresses most of your queries related to Flowerhorn. Thank you for reading.
