What Is The Best Food For Goldfish?

[Guest LexiG.]

What is the best food for goldfish? Right now I am feeding her flake foods from nnnnnn and I've heard alot about pellets and gel foods. Which is better? My gold fish is 3inches and is a fan-tail.

[dogsbykat]

Welcome I think gel food is probably the best, but there are many good sinking pellets (I like Omega One). I feed a variety of fresh veggies, sinking pellets, freeze dried shrimp and bloodworms. Flakes can cause them to gulp air at the surface, which can lead to floaty issues.

Edited November 17, 2010 by BuggyBear

[Sakura]

The best food in my opinion is gel food, but there are some good quality sinking pellets as well. There are tons of good gel food recipes here (some you can even make using baby food rather than whole veggies- it's very easy!): Goldfish Food Some good quality sinking pellets I know of are; Hikari Lionhead, Saki Hikari, and ProGold.

Whatever food choice you go with, you'll probably have to experiment for a little while because some foods make certain fish floaty, and it's different for every fish. Variety is also a great thing in a goldfish diet, so you can vary the gel food recipe from time to time, feed them peas or other soft vegetables as treats, or feed a combination of pellets and gel.

[kshepherd87]

Hey, welcome to Kokos!

I love Saki HIkari (I have to order it online as my lfs doesn't stock it) - I also feed cooked shelled peas, algae wafers and other veggies. Gel food is great too, I'm planning on making a batch soon

[fruitloop1]

I think flaked food is fine, my fish have always lived to healthy ages with normal food

[Sakura]

Flake food is actually very bad for the rounder-bodied fancy type goldfish (basically anything other than comets or commons) because the round-bodied fish are much more likely to have floaty issues. Their internal organs are much more unnaturally compacted, easily putting pressure on the swim bladder and causing flip-over. But aside from that, flake foods still aren't good for any type of goldfish because they are not very nutritious at all. Then any small amount of nutrition they do contain is leached off into the water as soon as they're put into the water. The sinking pellet brands that we recommend are good because: A. they sink, so no air gulping at the top, and B. they are very nutritious.

Fruitloop, your fish probably survived because the commons and comets are quite hardy. But it doesn't mean that they were thriving necessarily or that flake foods are the best choice for good nutrition.

Edited November 17, 2010 by Sakura