What’s the best food for Endlers? Endlers are an omnivores fish that will eat just about anything they can get into their small mouths.
For better health Endlers should be given a variety of foods rather than a single food all the time.
Foods We’ve Fed Our Endlers
We’ve tried a number of foods that our Endlers seem to love. Here are a few of them that seem to do the best for us.
- Crushed high quality flake food
- baby brine shrimp
- algae (allowed to grow naturally in aquarium)
- spirulina
- algae wafers
- Golden Pearls 200-300 microns size
- Frozen Bloodworms (chopped up)
- Frozen Brine Shrimp (chopped up)
- Zoo Med® Can O’ Cyclops
- New Life Spectrum® small fish formula
- New Life Spectrum® Small Fry Starter
- Hikari Fancy Guppy granules.
Foods Used By Other Hobbyists That We Haven’t Tried
There are a few foods that we hear work well for other hobbyists that we haven’t tried yet.
- blackworms
- hikari® First Bites
- Hikari® Micro Pellets
- frozen cyclops
- live mosquito larvae
Feeding Endlers Live Food
Because Endlers will eat just about anything we don’t feel it is necessary to feed them live food however they may provide some additional benefits not found in other foods. Some live foods such as cyclops or bloodworms or even Brine Shrimp may have the potential to carry parasites or diseases that may be harmful to Endlers. I would certainly avoid any live food that is caught in the wild. I would also be very cautious about any live food purchased commercially.
Some live foods that are produced from home such as vinegar eels should introduce little or no risk when it comes to parasites however we have not had the opportunity to try them yet.
Overfeeding Endlers
You should only feed your Endlers as much food as they will eat in 1-2 minutes. These little guys act like they are always starving and it can be tempting to overfeed them. Overfeeding Endlers can result in an ammonia spike which can be fatal Endlers and other fish.
We find feeding our Endlers small amounts at least 2 times a day seems to work best for us. We try to avoid feeding our Endlers the same thing all the time as we feel it helps them to be healthier and helps prevent them from getting bloated.
Feeding Endlers While On Vacation
Fortunately Endlers have a tendency towards grazing and love to poke around for algae and other tidbits that may be found in their aquarium. Allowing healthy Endlers to go without food for a day or two does no harm to them and is likely to be beneficial. In fact we find that they do extremely well if they go without food one day per week.
Even going on vacations for several days without feeding Endlers may be a better option than using time released food or having a friend feed them while your away.
When I was away to college (many years ago) I asked a friend if he would feed my fish while I was gone for a week. When I got home I found a tank that was full of brown murky water and all my fish where dead. My friend which had no experience keeping fish thought it would be best to simply dump all the food in the tank so that they would have plenty of food to eat while I was gone.
If I would have simply left them alone without feeding them they would have likely done just fine.
We have done some testing and found no ill effects to our Endlers if we leave them alone for a week without food in a well planted tank that has a little algae in it.
Trying to set up a partially “closed” ecosystem in a 10 gallon tank. I have a small variety of a aquatic plants established, about 5 varieties with a 3 to 4 inch layered substrate including a top layer of gravel. After 8 weeks I introduced 2 male and 2 female guppies that seem to be doing extremely well after 12 weeks. One of the aquatic plants came with a small snail, now I have a small population. Would like to increase the number of fish species to help ballance color and help control the snail population. The tank is unheated, I ‘ve added no foods. I add distilled water as needed to keep the water level high. Any recommendations?
Anytime you wish to add more fish to any aquarium you should consider the risks.
Your aquarium should be aged long enough and be large enough to accommodate additional fish.
Snails contribute an additional bio-load as well and there’s a possibility that there are many more snails in the aquarium than you can see.
Rather than getting additional fish to try to control the snail population you may wish to add an assassin snail or two to your aquarium.
Don’t forget that anytime you are adding anything to your established aquarium not only are you risking upsetting it’s delicate balance, you are also risking introducing new diseases and parasites.