Feeding Your Cichlid Fish

You will have to work out which category you are dealing with when feeding your Cichlid fish as their dietary requirements are quite different.

Carnivorous: These fish prey on other fish, especially the fry of other species.
Herbivorous: These fish are grazers and subsist by scraping algae off of rocks.
Omnivorous: These fish have a variety in their diet; eating plants, invertebrates, and small fish.
Micro-predators: These fish eat small invertebrates such as artemia and plankton.

Cichlid fish also benefit from a varied diet although this variation only needs to happen every few weeks as most commercially manufacture cichlid food will provide everything they need. My own fish were occasionally treated with either frozen blood worm or brine shrimp. The bloodworm cubes came straight from the freezer and just floated around the tank as a feeding frenzy occurred. As the warm tank water melted the cube bits started to break away and a comical tug of war ensued. The brine shrimp on the other hand just floated for a micro second before it was devoured.

Although frequency of feeding is often debated most experts agree that you should only be feeding your cichlid fish what can be devoured in 30 seconds at most. The fish will always look for more food and your cichlids should always appear hungry. African cichlids will gorge themselves in captivity, which is carried over from their feeding behaviour in the wild, where they spent most of their lives seraching for and devouring food which had very little in the way of nutritional content. In captivity they make no allowances for the food provided being of a far superior quality and will over eat if allowed to. Over eating will obviously cause health problems for your fish. Healthy fish will usually come to the feeding point in the tank when somebody approaches.