I love feeding my guppy fish. It is so much fun to watch them eat the food you offer. But what should you feed them? Anyways, which is the best food to feed your guppies? How many times you should feed your fish a day?
I will answer all your questions related to guppy food and the feeding schedule in this article.
How to Feed Your Guppy Fish?
Guppy fish always look hungry and can be overfed very easily. They will eat as much you offer them. Overfeeding will cause your fish health issues.
Feeding your guppies once or twice per day is enough. Make sure you offer them a good diet and a variety of food.
Offer them a small amount of food that they can eat in 20-40 seconds. Multiple smaller pinches of flake foods will work best.
If you offer live food such as blood worms or brine shrimp to your guppies, do not throw all the food at once. Divide them up in multiple doses.
Guppies are omnivores. They will accept almost anything you offer them. When it comes to commercial food, the selection is endless. There are hundreds of companies that produce fish food for both adults and fry.
You can also prepare your guppy food at home. This process is time-consuming, but might be worth trying it out, if you want to raise beautiful fish.
Best Commercial Guppy Food
Most of us do not have the time and energy to prepare our own fish food. The easiest way to give your fish the nutrition and vitamins they need is to buy fish food.
The most common food, that hobbies feed their guppies with is flake food because provides all the necessary vitamins and minerals to the fish. It is recommended to feed once a day a good quality flake food that is high in protein.
Quality flake foods have the ingredients listed on the label. Also look for the expiration date when purchasing fish food, because expired products might lack vitamins.
I’ve talked with guppy breeders, who only feed flake food to their fry and they are able to grow beautiful guppies really fast.
Veggie pallets are another food that you should include in the diet of your guppies. Veggie pallets contain greens such as algae, plankton and spirulina. These are high in vitamins B, C, D and E as well contain iron and calcium. Spirulina tablets help guppies resist skin infections and have healthier fins and tails. This food will also emphasize your fish’s colors, thanks to the natural carotenoid pigments.
Guppies love eating brine shrimp too. You can give them freeze-dried brine shrimp once or twice a week. Brine shrimp are a great source of protein and can be feed to booth adults and fry.
Blood worms are a great source of fat, which should be feed only in small quantities to adult guppies. Feeding freeze-dried blood worms to your fry can improve their growth rate a lot.
Tubifex worms are an excellent conditioner for your fish. Do not feed live tubifex worms to your fish, because if not kept in the right conditions, they can carry bacteria that will kill your fish. Freeze-dried tubifex worms however can be feed to your guppies once a week.
Here is a summary of the best commercially available guppy foods that I use:
- Flakes food
- Veggie pellets, Spirulina tablets
- Freeze-dried brine shrimp
- Freeze dried blood worms
- Freeze dried tubifex worms
I’ve tried many brands; New Life Spectrum and Aquacarium work the best for me. They offer all sorts of natural fish food, including those enumerated above. Here is a list of the products I use and recommend for feeding guppies:
| Food Name | Food Type | Price |
|---|---|---|
| New Life Spectrum Optimum Flakes | Flakes | |
| New Life Spectrum FLOAT | Pellets | |
| New Life Spectrum AlgaeMax | Wafers | |
| Aquacarium Spirulina | Flakes | |
| Aquacarium Brine Shrimp | Freeze-dried | |
| Aquacarium Tropical Flakes | Flakes | |
| Aquacarium Tubifex Worms | Freeze-dried | |
| Aquacarium Veggie Flakes | Flakes |
Some of these products might be recommended for certain types of fish and many fish keepers might consider these food not suitable for guppies. I can only say, that my guppies love these foods and they grow fast and are super-healthy. Just try them out and see. The results will amaze you.
Homemade Guppy Food
If you have the time, you can prepare your own fish food or culture your own live food.
Brine shrimp is the number one food for guppies, especially if they are feed live to your fish. Brine shrimp has a 60% protein content and around 25% fat and carbohydrates. A high level of protein, fat and carbohydrates will allow your guppy fry grow bigger and faster. Adult are also love consuming brine shrimp.
Brine shrimp can be cultured at home, indoors with ease. I use a brine shrimp hatchery kit purchased from Amazon years ago, to hatch brine shrimp eggs.
While brine shrimps eggs needs 1-3 days to hatch, I recommend keeping multiple hatcheries running at once, if you want to feed your fish with live food every day.
Egg yolk is one of the most common foods that hobbyist fish keepers prepare at home. Egg yolk provides a lot of fat to your fish, so adult should not be feed with it in high quantities.
The egg yolk is a great source of protein and also includes sodium potassium, and Vitamins such as A, C, D, B-12 and minerals such as calcium, Iron and Magnesium. Egg yolk is a complex food for baby guppy fish.
The yolk of a hard-boiled egg should be crushed up into a paste and feed to your fish in low quantities. Do not overfeed with this food, because it can highly pollute water.
Beef heart is another super-food that is feed often to guppies. Once the beef heart is cleaned of fat and chopped into very small pieces with a blender or a sharp knife, it can be feed to your fry guppies. It can be mixed with hard-boiled egg yolk, carrots, spirulina powder, shrimp and other ingredients for better results. It is not recommended to be feed to adults due to high fat.
Daphnia can be purchased as freeze-dried from stores; however, the big majority of fish keepers who feed daphnia are having their own live culture. Daphnia is relatively easy to culture at home. They require 6-8 hours of light and they feed on algae, yeast and bacteria.
Culturing daphnia indoor might be difficult, because of the smell. So keep that in mind if you want to culture daphnia in your home. Daphnia is a great source of protein, carbohydrates and fat. It also provides a great amount of vitamins A and D, which is vital to guppies and all fish.
Vinegar eels can also be cultured at home. I usually have 3 or 4 cultures running at once, in case one is crashed. Although they are easy to culture, harvesting them is a more complicated process. The strong smell of vinegar is another downside of culturing vinegar eels indoors. Although it is a good source of protein (50%) and fat (20%) you should not feed your fish very often with vinegar eels.
Micro-worms are similar to vinegar eels but are easier to harvest and don’t have a strong smell, because they can be kept in a sealed container.
Do This When You Are Out of Fish Food!
Take some frozen or fresh vegetables (cucumber, zucchini, spinach, carrots, peas, green beans and broccoli), blend them together.
Put the blend in a sealed bag and place it in the freezer. Once the blend is completely frozen, cut off a small piece and feed it to your fish.
From the vegetable blend, you can prepare flake food too. Put the veggie blend on a cocking paper, and place it in the oven. Set the oven to 250 °F (120 °C) and dry it out completely. Once the blend is completely dry, crush it up in small pieces and pour it into an empty sealable container or seal bag. There you have your homemade flake food.
Guppy Fry Food
Guppy fry will accept any food that is feed to adults. But to ensure their best development, you should follow a strict feeding schedule. Feed the fry multiple times a day with the following foods:
- 5:00 – turn lights on
- 6:00 AM – baby brine shrimp
- 7:00 AM – freeze-dried blood worms / flake food
- 11:00 AM – Beef heart mixed with vegetables
- 14:00 PM – live daphnia / vinegar eel / micro worms
- 17:00 PM – flake food before sleep
- 18:00 – turn lights off
Keeping the lights on for more than 12 hours a day on your guppy fry will help in growth significantly. Also, more frequent water changes are recommended for baby guppies.
Magic Guppy Food Recipe
One day I asked a friend of mine, who is a veteran in guppy breeding and who has won many competitions on different fish breeding shows: what is your secret?
He told that he feeds the best food to its fry. He prepares his own fish food and the recipe is secret. I managed to get him to tell me the ingredients, but I had to promos to not copy his food. He didn’t tell me about the quantities, so you will have to figure that out for yourself.
Here are the ingredients for the ultimate guppy fish flake food:
- Bone Meal
- Carrots
- Dhapnia
- Dried Kelp
- Fish Liver Oil
- Fish Meal
- Plankton
- Soybean Flour
- Spirulina
- Vitamins A, B, B 1, B2, & D3
- Wheat
- Yeast
- Yellow Sweet Potato
How to Feed Guppies on Vacation?
If you are afraid of your fish dying while you are on holiday, I have good news for you. Adult guppies will be fine for up to 2 weeks without food. Fry are more sensitive, but they will also resist one week without being feed.
If you don’t want to leave your fish unfed for a week or two, you can purchase and set up an auto feeder. I’ve tried multiple auto feeders, but the Eheim feeder works best for me. It can be set up to feed up to 8 times a day at certain hours. The battery lasts for a very long time, so I don’t have to worry about it. Auto feeders can clog up when using flake food. So watch out for that!
In Conclusion
Whether you are a guppy breeder, master or beginner, or just a hobby guppy fish keeper, now you know what to feed your guppies with.
It is important to offer your fish a variety of high-quality food, but do not overfeed them.
Resources:
Featured Image: from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PakJxyTQSEA
I’ve just run out of food for my guppies and had no idea that I can prepare them some food at home.
You gave me some very good tips. I will boil some eggs and will give them vegetables too.
Thanks a lot for the effort you are putting into this website to teach people on how to keep their guppy fish.
I GONOTICED A HUGE VARIETIES OF GUPPY FOOD . THANKS ALOT FOR YOUR VALUABLE DESCRIPTIONS. LET ME TRY TO FEED MY GUPPIES THE BEST FOOD. IF YOU DONT MIND CAN YOU BRIEF ABOUT THE FISH TANKS AND WHAT KIND OF AQARIUM SHOULD BE USED.OR ANY OTHER METHOD YOU KNOW. PLEASE SHARE WITH ME.