I told my friends parents I wanted to get their kid fish for his birthday. They already had a tank but they went out and bought a small plastic tank. It had Nutrafin goldfish food in it and I was wondering if you couldd feed it to guppies or swordtails or something like that without it hurting them.
2007-01-28 06:24:17 · 6 answers · asked by Kitty 2 in Pets ➔ Fish
Guppies & swordtails, being tropical fish, have vastly different nutritional requirements to goldfish. In the long term, their health will suffer. Be safe, & offer a good tropical flake. Nutrafin tropical would be fine.
2007-01-28 07:40:20 · answer #1 · answered by ispooky2 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
ispooky2 nailed it. It won't hurt them in the short term, but over the long term it's not going to supply their needs. Then again, no single food will really supply all their needs. Buy a good dry food made for the fish you keep and also use some special foods from time to time. What special foods depends on your fish, but for guppies and swordtails. Bloodworms, blackworm, daphenia, mosquito larvae and brine shrimp are all good choices. Personally I prefer live first, then frozen then freeze dried, so I would say by the frozen varieties of these and feed one kind of special food once a day, feed them flake the other feeding for that day.
2007-01-28 07:52:45 · answer #2 · answered by magicman116 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
They need their own kind of food. Eating goldfish food wouldn't hurt them, but they have to eat their own kind too. Goldfish eat veggies, tropical fish largely eat more meaty things.
I would be concerned about the 'small plastic tank' though. Most of those set ups are really....lame. They are too small for goldfish and not set up right for tropicals like guppies and swordtails. They need to have a filter and a heater to keep guppies or swords (swords actually get fairly large...so guppies might be better) and goldfish need a very large tank (in a 29 gallon tank, if you were really good about cleaning, you might be able to keep two goldfish)
If it's really just a plastic 'fishbowl' I would recommend a betta (just one!) instead. Easy to take care of, and they don't need the filter or the heater unless it's really really cold in your house. Room temp is usually fine.
2007-01-29 08:49:54 · answer #3 · answered by yama 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Dont worry about it. Fishfood is fishfood. If the fish can fit it into their mouths then they're good to go. They might want to later buy them tropical fish flakes just for that little extra boost of vitamins in their food but untill then they'll be just fine.
2007-01-28 07:37:42 · answer #4 · answered by Ana 1 · 0⤊ 2⤋
It shouldn't hurt them. We fed the same kind of food to all the fish at the store where I worked, I just don't remember what kind of food it was.
2007-01-28 06:34:33 · answer #5 · answered by desiderio 5 · 1⤊ 1⤋
NO! Simple as that :)
2007-01-28 08:23:58 · answer #6 · answered by losershaven 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋