Could guppies survive on homefood alone?

Question

I was wondering if guppies could survive on eating a vast variety of homefood. Such as bread, shrimp, crab, egg, or w/e is appropriate (These foods I'm not sure about, just guessing XD). If they can, could anyone tell me what kinds of food they would be able to eat? Thanks everyone.

Answer 1

Yes, they can, but you will be hard pressed to provide them with all the nutrients they would need. To feed they without benefit of flake foods, I would suggest you rely heavily on live foods such as blood worms, black worms, grubs, maggots, daphnia, mosquito larvae and similar small bugs. I wouldn't usse meats from warm blooded animals as those provide a different set of amino acids and the insect or fish sources would be better nutrition for the fish.

As for vegetable matter in their diet, algae will provide some nutritional value as would soft leafed water plants. In addition to those you can add peas, leafy greens such as leaf lettuce, basal, parsely, spinach, mustard greens, turnip greens etc. Other good choices for vegetables would include beets, squashes, beans for different type and celery leaves. Of course, these would need to be softened before feeding.

Things to avoid would include the above mentioend meat items like beef, chicken or pork as well as very sweet fruits, berries or vegetables. Sugars don't really have a place in a fishes diet and the various other nurtitional material from sweet items can be found in other materials.

Given the difficulty in meeting all of these needs, I would suggest you use a good flake food as the basis of the fishes diet and supplement with some of the above mentioned food items.

MM