Goldfish eat just about anything. This includes any plants you try to put
in your tank. Keeping that in mind it is a good idea not to put any
live plants in with goldfish, there are two exceptions for this though,
when your fish are breeding, and when you are raising young fry, but these
are discussed in other areas.
Unless of course you want to feed your fish live plants, but aquarium
plants are often rather expensive just for food.
Goldfish should be fed 2 or 3 times a day for a couple of minutes. Giving
them enough food to eat in 5 minutes, 3 times a day is better then giving
them one feeding for 15 minutes.
Considering that goldfish will eat anything, it's up to you to decide what
to feed them. Until recently most goldfish food has been based on the
belief that goldfish ate only plants, however they also eat insects,
worms and other fish.
There are three types of food available to buy from most pet shops for
goldfish. Flake food, pellet food and frozen food. Each has their own
advantages and disadvantages.
Flake food can be crushed into a fine powder for very small fish, but it
often is lower in nutritional value then the other two.
Pellet food either sinks or floats, if it sinks the fish could lose it and
the food will end up polluting the water. If it floats then it contains
air pockets. Either way pellet food will expand after time and food
expanding in a fish's stomach is not a good idea.
Frozen food is often too expensive to be fed as part of a staple diet for
your fish. Although as a once a week snack they are not bad. The same
with live food bought from pet stores.
That is what is available in stores. If you choose pellet food it is best
to soak the food in a dish of water for 5 or 10 minutes before feeding it
to your fish. This will cause the food to expand before the fish eats it.
Pellet food will also allow fish to get a mouthful of food and not much
air which will make them sleepy, as what happens with flake food.
Goldfish will eat a number of other things as well. Peas (remove the
shell), oranges, watermelon, romaine lettuce, earthworms, insects, small
fry and chopped shrimp just to name a few.
Overall a fish needs a balanced diet just like us and it is a good idea to
feed them things on occasion other then just their everyday food.
