How Often Should You Feed Mollies
Mollies are one of the favorite fish for home aquarium due to their easy care. These tropical fish will eat just about anything, which is why it's great to have. All living things need foods to survive, so you're probably wondering what to feed mollies then, right? Well, keep reading and you'll know exactly what to feed mollies and how to feed them the proper ways.
Best Types of Food For Mollies
When it comes to mollies, they will eat just about anything that is given to them. Everything from live foods to vegetables, they'll eat it all. However, you will want the best food for your mollies so they'll be healthy and strong. With so many different types of food available on the market these days, it's hard to pick and choose the best one. When choosing foods for your mollies, just remember that you need a balanced diet for optimal health.
The types of fish food that are available for mollies are live foods, freeze-dried food, pellets, and flakes. Out of all these options, live foods are usually the best types of food because they are alive and fresh. For that reason, live foods will have the highest nutrition contents that other food types. However, freeze-dries, pellets, and flakes are still great to feed mollies too, and can be used as a backup feeder for your mollies.
Homemade fish food is another type of food great for feeding mollies. Since you're making this yourself at home, you can combine different things and produce a very high nutritional fish food.
Feeding Live Foods To Mollies
When it comes to feeding your mollies, live foods are the best types of food you can give them. Some of the live foods include baby brine shrimp, daphnia, insect larvae, vinegar eels, and bloodworms. Live foods have the highest content of protein and other nutrition that other types of foods.
Feeding live foods are not only good for the health of your mollies, but it helps keep them active as well. By putting live foods in the aquarium, it will make the mollies chase them around. Active mollies will be healthier and live longer.
When feeding them live foods, put in a couple at a time. If you have mollies in a community tank, make sure your mollies are getting their share of foods. Mollies are not aggressive fish and will likely not compete for foods. For that reason, carefully watch to make sure each molly fish got a chance to eat.
Live foods are great to give to mollies every day. However, there are times when you can't feed them live foods. During the winter months, insect larvas and daphnia will not be available for purchase. When that happens, you can feed them with other types of food.
Feeding Freeze-Dried Foods To Mollies
Some of the popular freeze-dried food you can give them are brine shrimp, tubifex, and bloodworms. These are an excellent source of protein for mollies.
Before feeding them freeze-dried foods, put it in a cup and let it soak for a couple of minutes first. Out of the package, freeze-dried food will be too hard for the mollies to bite. Make sure to feed them small quantities at a time, divided up in multiple feedings.
Feeding Mollies Fish Pellets
Pellets are another great choice to feed mollies. They are easy to use and can be kept in storage for a long period. There are many different types of pellets available on the market. They come in different sizes ranging from mini to large pellets. Also, pellets are offered with different ingredients tailored to the type of fish you have.
For mollies, you'll want to stick with tropical pellets. Tropical pellets have all the ingredients that your mollies require to maintain good health. I recommend ADP Tropical Fish Food Pellets due to their high-quality content and ease of use.
When feeding pellets to mollies, be careful on how much you feed them. Mollies are known to eat as much and as many times as you'll feed them. By overfeeding the mollies, you'll increase their chances of having constipation to other digestive issues. Also, overfeeding will increase the waste production of the fish, which will dirty the water.
Since mollies don't know when to stop eating, you should only give them food twice daily, once in the morning and once in the evening.
Feeding Mollies Veggie Pellets And Tablets
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There are many different veggie pellets and tablets on the market, but what I recommend is Omega One Super Color Veggie Kelp. This pellet has spirulina as the ingredient, which is an added benefit for your mollies. Spirulina is known to give your fish beautiful colors and protect the fins, tails, and skin from infections.
Fish Flakes For Mollies
For mollies, you'll want to use the highest quality flakes available. Better quality will result in healthier fish and they will be less prone to diseases and infections. Here's one that I recommend and personally use myself to feed my mollies: TetraPro Tropical Crisps Fish Food, Advanced Clear Water Formula. Not only does it contain only high-quality ingredients, but it will help keep your aquarium water clear as well.
Flakes are convenient to use to meet the nutritional needs of your mollies. In addition, they make a great food supplement to live foods too.
Homemade Foods for Mollies
Besides the usual fish food to feed mollies, you can try to make fish food at home. Homemade food is great for mollies because you can give them high-quality food. Beside mollies, other fish such as plecostomus, Bettas, Cory catfish, and goldfish can benefit from it. It's not difficult to make homemade fish food and all the ingredients can be found in your garden or at the grocery stores.
Beef Heart Paste
This is a fish superfood and great for adult mollies and molly fry alike. Beef heart paste is really simple to make at home and you can make it in a matter of minutes.
To prepare this superfood, all you need is a blender, beef heart, and shrimps. Most people use gelatin for making the paste, but I like to use shrimps because it provides better consistency. For the beef heart, make sure to strip away all the fats first. Then put the beef heart in the blender with the shrimps and start the blender.
Blend all the ingredients until it forms a thick paste texture. Then put it in a bag and freeze it in the freezer. When you're ready to feed them, simply break off small chunks and feed it to them.
The beef heart contains a high level of fat content. Therefore, you'll want to give beef heart paste to mollies as snacks. For molly fry, you can feed them as much as you want.
Egg Yolks
Egg yolks are another great homemade food to give mollies. It's really easy to make and provides a lot of nutrients for your mollies.
Preparing this homemade fish food is simply to hard boil an egg first. Then, remove the yolk and mash it into a paste. Since this takes only a couple of minutes to make, you won't need to freeze it.
When feeding the mollies, make sure to put a small amount of paste each time. If you put too much at a time, mollies won't have enough time to eat it all, and it could make the water dirty.
Like the beef heart paste, you'll want to feed egg yolks to mollies as a snack. Egg yolks contain a high level of fat content and it could cause mollies to be bloated.
Vegetable Paste
Vegetables are great food for mollies because it provides a balanced diet for them. Any vegetables will be suitable to feed mollies.
After gathering all the vegetables, put them all into a blender and blend it until it turns into a paste. Take the paste and place it in a bag and freeze it. When you're ready to feed them, simply break off small pieces at a time.
Another option to make a vegetable paste is to dry them out. After you've blend all the vegetables in the blender, place the paste on a parchment paper and cook it in the oven. Set the oven to about 250 °F for about 10 minutes.
After it's cooked, leave it out on the table to dry. After it's dried, store it in a sealable container or a sealed bag.
What To Feed Molly Fry
When it comes to molly fry, you can actually feed them anything that adult mollies eat. However, the foods that you give to them will need to be in very small sizes. Molly fry has smaller mouth openings, therefore, you should crush any flakes into a powder form.
For molly fry to grow healthy and strong, the best type of food to give them are live foods. Live foods such as daphnia, bloodworms, and baby brine shrimp. These foods are packed with a lot of nutrients that the molly fry needs to develop.
Live foods are the best for them, but sometimes pet stores don't have them due to the seasons. Alternatives to live foods are frozen or freeze-dried foods. These are also great for feeding molly fry. Before feeding them frozen foods, thaw it out in a cup of water first.
Feeding different types of food each day is great for their development. You can feed them brine shrimps today, and tropical pellets the next day. By doing so, not only is it good for their development, it will help them get used to the foods when they are an adult.
To ensure molly fry are getting enough food each day, you'll need to create a feeding schedule. Feed them around 6 times a day, about 3 hours apart from each feeding. Also, make sure there is no food leftover after each feeding.
What To Feed Mollies That Are Sick
If you noticed that your mollies are sick, feeding them will be difficult. Sick mollies will usually stay in one area of the tank and will not be interested in any food that you give them.
Mollies can survive over a week without any food. So if they're not eating anything right now, it should be fine. However, you should find a solution to get them to recover as soon as possible.
One thing to look at is their environment. If you've just changed the water and the mollies are sick, try a water conditioner. After a day after the treatment, your mollies will start to eat again. This water conditioner is what I recommend to help remove nitrates and balance the pH level quickly: Seachem Prime Fresh and Saltwater Conditioner.
Another factor to consider is diseases. Your fish might get infected from parasites. If you feed your mollies live foods, it could be from this. To get rid of the parasites, you can use medication on the fish. I recommend this and this for mollies that are infected with parasites.
Mollies usually recover fast from illness if you treat the problem quickly. During the recovery stage, feed them freeze-dried food and veggie tablets. That should help your fish recover quickly.
Fred has been a fishkeeper his whole life. At the age of 3 yrs old, he got started with a goldfish that was given to him on his birthday. Ever since then, he loved caring for fish of all types and species. Beside fishkeeping, he enjoy fly fishing and the outdoors with his 4 kids.
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