The rule of thumb to feed all the fish can eat in five minutes twice a day is a good one, provided that all of the fish are actually getting some of the food. This isn't a problem with schooling fish, but a territorial fish like a cichlid can monopolize a food supply. Most aquarists therefore end up feeding a cichlid aquarium more than the recommended amount, and so they must deal with the high nitrate levels, algae growth, and unwanted breeding that comes with overfed fish. This is just part of the deal when you raise cichlids. But schooling fish can be fed quite sparingly because they will feed as a school rather than competitively. The concentration of their wastes can therefore be kept to a minimum, thus giving you a healthy, easily maintained, and more enjoyable tank.

Nowadays all good aquarium stores have freezers with frozen fish foods. These include various mollusks, fish, crustaceans, and aquatic insects. None of them are inexpensive. Most of them you can make yourself with a food processor and a trip to Shun Fat (see above), but frozen adult brine shrimp (discussed below) and blood worms (midge larvae) are more difficult to come by and could be considered for purchase at the pet store.

As I mentioned before, you may eventually get bored of feeding your fish just flakes. Or the financial realities of purchasing flake foods (yes, you do pay for their convenience) may make you look for less expensive alternatives.

Wardley is the least expensive of the recommended brands and is also available in bulk, but the Wardley brand name lacks the range of "specialty flakes" that Aquarian and Tetra offer. As far as these specialty flakes go, the only one I have any use for are the "green" flakes that are high in vegetable matter. Most of these vegetable flakes contain Spirulina, which is a photosynthetic cyanobacterium (so Spirulina is not an alga as is generally assumed). Spirulina is quite high in protein and a great source of many amino acids that are otherwise difficult to acquire. Health food stores are full of the stuff. Spirulina flakes are just what you need for mollies and a host of other vegetarian fishes. Aquarian and Tetra also offer Spirulina enriched wafers that sink, which are very good for algae-eating bottom feeders like plecos.

The various other flake foods, like "carnivore flakes", "color flakes", etc. are in my humble opinion more useful as marketing strategies than as dietary supplements. Feel free to purchase a variety of flakes, but all good flake foods are heterogeneous mixtures of ingredients and supply complete nutrition on their own.

This is my recipe. I food-process several multivitamin tables (with vitamin C) to dust, then process about 1/2 kilo of the red meat portion of a beef heart (cut away from all the fat and connective tissue). Then goes in a good handful of spinach leaves (no stems), one young whole zucchini, and a few raw carrots. Then the bulk of the food is added, which is whole fish. The fish I originally used were those minnows sold as bait, but I have since discovered Shun Fat, an Oriental supermarket in Forest Lawn (at 3215 17th Ave, SE). Here you can get a wide assortment of frozen sea foods. Nowadays I buy a kilo of frozen capelin since they are full of nutritious roe. I also get a frozen 1/2 kilo bag of something called "shrimp fry". I am not sure exactly what this is (some form of krill I think) but it's a lot cheaper than buying real shrimp, which I would have to do if this wonderful stuff weren't available. I also add 1/2 kilo of mosquito larvae and Daphnia that I had collected myself and froze previously (see below for a discussion on live food collecting).

Many live foods can be raised at home, and the culture of lived foods is a huge topic in its own right. I'll just mention a few foods and try to direct you to more information. A good place to start is in the CAS library, which has a book called the Encyclopedia of Live Foods. This book covers almost all the topics discussed below and several more.

Many fish either require vegetable diets or can benefit from them. Most notable for requiring vegetables are the plecos (South American algae eating catfishes), silver dollars (vegetarian relatives of the piranha), and mbuna (rock-dwelling cichlids from Lake Malawi, Africa).