Feeding Native Sunfish

I was wondering what you guys feed you sunfish? I am interested in switching what I feed my fish currently and I currently use Hikari Massivore Delite because even getting the 2.2 lbs bag it is expensive (best I can find is $45) and it makes the water smell bad. I have had problems in the past trying to switch foods and my fish wouldn't take it. I emailed XTreme foods about their monster pellet, Omega about their sinking cichlid pellets, and Purina about their sinking Aquamax pellet called Grower I believe. I want to see if they will send some samples. I have tried New Life Spectrum and some of them ate them, but some wouldn't and they made the water smell too and were nearly as expensive. I do subsidize with shrimp as well, but of course that is not a reasonably affordable diet. They also don't seem to like any floating foods. I have pumpkinseed, blue gills, rock bass, black crappie, redbreast, and a brown bullhead. Any information or tips would be greatly appreciated!

BJ

The cost of commercially prepared food is one of the reasons why I switched to culturing my own fish food. My fish are small so I feed them grindal worms and microworms, but there are other cultured foods that are larger. I know of redworms, feeder guppies, and crickets offhand, and maybe other keepers of large fish would know of more.

To give you an idea of how much the live food costs to culture, I bought the grindal worms a bag of Kibbles 'N Bits a year ago for $8 and am still using it. I bought the plastic shoe box at Walmart for like $5 (I don't remember how much exactly), and the sponges were $1 for a big pack at the dollar store. From that initial investment of maybe $30 total for all my cultures (which I have earned back by selling starter cultures to others), I feed my fish every day three times a day. And I have hundreds of fish. Commercially prepared foods were costing me $10 a month for frozen bloodworms and $15 every six months for flake food. I'm probably not saving that much money but it makes me happy not to have to rely on other people and not have to worry about upkeep cost. Ideally pets should not cost money, right? It's easier to rationalize your hobbies to your spouse when they don't cost an arm and a leg The freshwater systems are all in the black. I've made money net overall by keeping these freshwater fish. Live foods were a big part of that; it's really easy to make starter cultures and trade/sell them.

Edited by EricaWieser, 16 December 2012 - 10:27 PM.

I use New Life Spectrum to feed my sunfish (longear, dollar, warmouth, and redbreast) and snail bullheads. Although pricey (like you mentioned) this is the food that I get the most bang-for-my-buck. The reason why: I fed Hikari floating carnivore pellets for about 3 years. I would feed fish, but they never seemed to stay plump, they didn't grow fast, and I fed A LOT. I was convinced to try NLF Thera A Lg. Fish formula. I was hesitant b/c of the price, but I feed half as much, half as often as I did with Hikari, and I have seen better growth, colors and overall condition (plumpness) of my sunnies. Yes, uneaten food can cause water quality issues, but this is the case with all foods. Just don't feed so often. Actually, to try and convert your fish to prepared foods, don't feed your fish for a while - let them get hungry, then only offer them the pellets. All it takes is one fish to catch on and the rest will follow.

I use commercially available diets and formulate my own. My fish are kept for extending periods of time and fed lots of feed. In my opinion, even the best feed brands out there are too hot / rich for long-term use, and despite supporting assume growth result in fish essentially burning themselves up. Suggest restricting the amount of food offered and providing a mixture of live and formulat foods.

I feed my Orange Spotted, Longear and Bluegill frozen bloodworms, freeze-dried krill, earthworms & grubs (that I collect in my back yard), wax worms and other insect larvae (that I buy at my local pet store) and frozen chopped mosquito fish (that I collect with a dip net). I never bothered to figure out how much I spend on food, but it can't be that much. I've never tried to convert my sunfish to prepared foods.

Why freeze mosquitio fish? They're fun to watch when added live.

I'll second the recommendation of New Life Spectrum.

I have been wondering this as well, what about something like the European Shrimp mix

http://www.cichlid-f...ood_recipes.php

Should anything be added or changed? or even used at all?

I use New Life Spectrum to feed my sunfish (longear, dollar, warmouth, and redbreast) and snail bullheads. Although pricey (like you mentioned) this is the food that I get the most bang-for-my-buck. The reason why: I fed Hikari floating carnivore pellets for about 3 years. I would feed fish, but they never seemed to stay plump, they didn't grow fast, and I fed A LOT. I was convinced to try NLF Thera A Lg. Fish formula. I was hesitant b/c of the price, but I feed half as much, half as often as I did with Hikari, and I have seen better growth, colors and overall condition (plumpness) of my sunnies. Yes, uneaten food can cause water quality issues, but this is the case with all foods. Just don't feed so often. Actually, to try and convert your fish to prepared foods, don't feed your fish for a while - let them get hungry, then only offer them the pellets. All it takes is one fish to catch on and the rest will follow.

Thanks for everybody's replies!

I have tried NLS Mega Fish Formula and my only like 2 or 3 of my Massivore Delite trained fish would eat it. It took me awhile to go through it. I might try this one that you are talking about because I agree, my fish are growing too slowly and I feed them a lot of pellets. I will give that Thera A Lg. Fish formula a try. It is a much smaller pellet though than the Massivore Delite so I am afraid they won't eat it. I wonder if I can get a sample from NLS to try. I will email them.

Well I got some New Life Spectrum jumbo fish sinking pellets. They are a little small compared to the Massivore Delite that they eat now, but the majority of them seem to like them. I ordered some more of the Mega Fish Formula that I tried in the past now too. Only a few of my fish would eat those, but I am hoping between the Jumbo Fish and the Mega Fish that I will have enough to switch them over. There is way less odor to none at all with the Jumbo Fish formula that I am using now. Just a garlic smell which I can live with compared to the dead fish smell before. Plus the food is much more economical. I have read from a lot of people that their fish on Massivore have little to no growth, but with NLS they started getting bigger.

I fed my pumpkinseed hikari mifrowafers and NLS when it was smaller. Now that it has gotten a bit bigger it no longer wants to eat pellets. I usually buy feeder guppies and feed the guppies a lot of veggie flakes and baby brine shrimp and then feed those guppies to my sunfish. I also feed it frozen mysis shrimp, bloodworms, small snails from my other tank, waxworms, red worms, crickets, and sometimes little balls of bread that I roll veggie flakes into.

I feed a variety of foods to my fish every day but based on this thread I too bought some New Life Spectrum (2mm) pellets to try out. I have mostly small sunfish right now averaging from 1.5 inches to 4 inches. The pellets I have used in the past are soft formed krill pellets and they like these a lot. After a few days I have been intermixing both to get them used to it. I would say half are eating the Spectrum and the other half are mouthing them. The 2mm is too large for the smaller juvenile sunfish so I have ordered some 1mm pellets to give them a try. I find that complete acceptance can take a few weeks but so far I think that the Spectrum may work. I also feed 'real' food to the fish weekly and they always like the treats.

Usil

For small sunnies I use the tetramax betta pellets and freeze dried bloodworms, for bigger sunnies I would feed them wardly cichlid crumbles (its cheap at walmart) and supplement their diet with cultured scuds (they love them) and I had a 10g. tank of used to breed least killifish to feed the extras to my Green sunfish.

I've converted mine to Hikari cichlid gold medium. I have 3 green sunfish and 1 bluegill that are all between 5 and 7 inches. I've had them for less than a month and I started feeding them earthworms from a bait shop but then I was gone for a weekend and didn't feed them for two days. When I got back I figured this was the perfect time to convert them to pellets. I presoak the pellets in seachem garlic guard to make them more appetizing. It took only two days for them to catch on and now I only feed them live food maybe once a week and not a lot.

You can also soak pellets in thawed shrimp or bloodworm "juice" until they soften, for training new fish onto pellet feed. Gradually reduce the soaking time until the fish will take them unsoaked. One trained fish can help convince a tankfull of untrained fish. Remember the "Mikey" commercials for Life cereal? - it sure works with visual-feeding fish.