How to Feed Frozen Fish Food to Your Aquarium

Feeding only fish flakes or wafers to your aquarium fish is like the human equivalent of only eating protein bars every day. They are nutritious, but wouldn’t it be great to treat your fish to a delicious roast chicken dinner once in a while? Then you should try frozen fish foods. This premium-grade fish food is packed with high-quality proteins, healthy fatty acids, and gut-loaded vitamins. After live foods, frozen foods are the next closest thing to what fish would normally eat in the wild and therefore are irresistible to picky eaters or sick animals that have decreased appetite. They are an excellent way to provide more variety and nutrition to your fish’s diet, and breeders often use them to condition their fish for spawning.

Frozen foods usually consist of whole ingredients that are flash frozen to retain as much of the original nutrients as possible and destroy any pathogens. Fish food can be bought at any local fish shop, pet shop or online store. You can either buy them in small cubes or large frozen slabs that are easy to break into smaller pieces. Let’s now take a look at which frozen foods are best for fish in the next section.

Frozen fish food is often packaged in individual cubes to make it easy to eat.

Different Types of Frozen Fish Foods

For

meat lovers

Frozen bloodworms, which are similar to betta fish, pufferfish and loaches, are always a big hit. “Bloodworms”, which are actually larvae of midge fly flies, can be found in freshwater bodies. They are often eaten by aquatic insects, fish, amphibians and other animals. The hemoglobin within their bodies gives them their bright red color. Frozen bloodworms can be purchased in a variety of sizes, including regular, jumbo and mini. This will allow you to choose the size that suits your fish best. Another type of worm you can try is frozen tubifex worms, which is a great food to get your corydoras and other fish to breed.

Dwarf puffers enjoy eating frozen bloodworms but they need to be able to eat other foods for their optimal health.

Certain fish like goldfish, betta and Apistogramma Cyclids may be susceptible to constipation and bloating if they consume too many protein and not enough fiber. We recommend frozen brine shrimp to include more roughage in their diet. The Artemia brine shrimp is a 0.4-inch (1 cm) aquatic crustacean that is widely used in the aquarium hobby as fish food. Its exoskeleton, made of tough chitin that is difficult to digest by most animals, acts as fiber, helping your fish move their waste easier. You can feed frozen spirulina shrimp to increase vitamins and natural color enhancement. This is made up of brine shrimp that have been gut-loaded with nutrient rich spirulina alga.

Fish food made out of brine shrimp and other crustaceans can help your fish’s digestive system to run more smoothly.

Nano fish and filter feeders often cannot consume larger frozen foods because they are too large to swallow and too hard to bite off pieces, so consider giving them smaller foods such as frozen daphnia and cyclops. These tiny freshwater crustaceans measure 0.02-0.2 inches (0.5-5mm), with the cyclops being slightly smaller. These crustaceans are delicious and rich in protein. They also have exoskeletons which aid with digestion. Frozen baby brine shrimp are a great option for baby fry. These shrimp are only 450 millimeters in size. Baby brine shrimp are different from adult brine shrimp because they still have their yolk sacs, which are filled with healthy fats and proteins that are ideal for newborn fish.

Baby brine shrimp is one of the best foods to feed your fish fry to boost healthy growth and increase survival rate.

If you have larger and more complex fish, it is best to choose frozen fish foods that are richer in ingredients like mysis shrimp, silversides, and krill. If you have monster fish, you may need to start shopping at the grocery store for human-sized foods like frozen cocktail shrimp, prawns, and fish fillets. For their teeth to grow, some pufferfish require hard shells. So, look out for frozen oysters or clams.

Frozen Fish Foods: What to Feed?

There are many ways to feed frozen food, depending on the number of fish or tanks. Dropping a cube, or piece of frozen food slab, directly into your aquarium will make it easy for fish to start eating it. To slow down the release of the food, some people prefer to place it in a cone called a worm feeder. This will prevent any fish that are the fastest or largest from eating the entire cube.

Fold a cube with frozen bloodworms inside a worm feeder cone. This will help keep the worms contained and makes it less messy.

Other fish keepers prefer to defrost the cubes in a small jar of tank water for a few minutes and then feed the liquid using a pipette or turkey baster. This technique is good for quickly feeding lots of aquariums or target feeding certain fish that get outcompeted during mealtimes. We recommend that you freeze any frozen food, and then add some vitamin supplements to your fish to increase their immunity and brightness.

If your fish eats only frozen and live foods, we recommend that you add multivitamins to help prevent any nutritional deficiencies.

Do not to leave frozen food at room temperature for more than 30 minutes or so because then it may start to spoil and smell. Refrigerate any frozen food that has been thawed at room temperatures. Bacteria growth could have begun and may have contaminated the fish. Set a timer if needed to avoid wasting food and upsetting your family or roommates.

Frequently Asked Questions about Frozen Fish Food

How often should you feed frozen fish foods?

It all depends upon your preferences and the care needs of your fish. For typical omnivores or community fish, you can feed frozen foods anywhere from once a week to several times a week. If they are picky eaters like African dwarf frogs and pufferfish, they might refuse to eat any other food than frozen or live foods. To ensure that your fish has all the nutrients they need for a long and healthy life, you should try to mix frozen, freeze-dried gel, live, gel, prepared and live foods as much as possible.

How much frozen food do I need? This question is difficult because different fish have different appetites. Some species are more efficient at eating than others. You should first consider how thin or fat your fish are, and then how much food you have left over. Your fish should have slightly round abdomens. If your fish’s bellies appear too large, you might consider decreasing the amount they are fed. And if their bellies seem sunken in or too swollen to eat, you may consider increasing their portion sizes. You can also remove any extra frozen food that your fish have left on the ground for several hours. A cube of bloodworms may not be enough for one betta fish. If it does, the entire cube will need to be thawed. For more details on how much to feed your fish, read our full article here.

What should I do if my fish refuses other frozen foods? Mixing pellets with frozen bloodworms can help your fish eat other foods. Gradually increase the amount of pellets to the bloodworms until the fish is able to eat the pellets by themselves. Your fish may be more inclined to try new foods if you fast them for 2-7 days.

Frozen fish foods can be a fun, tasty way to increase variety in your fish’s diet. For more ideas on how to expand your fish’s palette, read about 5 high-quality fish foods that you have to try.