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When I first got my Platy fish I was worried about feeding them the right food. I wanted to make sure they had a good diet to keep them happy and healthy. But what do Platy fish eat? What exactly is a Platy fish diet? While doing a little research I came across some interesting tips about how to feed my Platys a surprisingly varied, and healthy diet.
Platys are an omnivorous fish. Which means they are happy to eat a variety of meat and vegetable based foods. This makes the Platy easy to feed. They do well on a mix of meat and plant based foods. The meaty (protein) side of their diet can include: insects, tubifex worms, blood worms and small crustaceans such as brine shrimp. And When it comes to the vegetables, courgette (zucchini), cucumber and lettuce are all acceptable on the Platy menu, along with other veggie options too. Platys will also be happy to dine on flake food, which can be used as a staple part of their diet. With so much choice and flexibility in the Platy diet what exactly should you be feeding your Platy? And is a variety of foods really that important?
What To Feed Your Platy Fish?
Feeding your Platys a diet that contains both protein and vegetables will keep them happy and healthy. And there’s a couple of good reasons for this.
Firstly, a diet that combines protein and vegetables will keep your fish’s immune system healthy. So you’ll have less chance of your Platys developing a disease and becoming ill or dying prematurely.
Secondly, a varied and complete diet is important for normal growth and development. If you feed your Platys the right combination of nutrients you should end up with a strong, healthy and lively Platy community in your aquarium.
This may sound like hard work. Particularly if you’re new to keeping Platys. But it doesn’t have to be hard work at all. In fact you can keep it simple.
Basic Platy Diet
A good quality flake food will usually contain a mix of plant and protein based ingredients. Along with other beneficial additions such as the appropriate vitamins and minerals for Platy fish. This means that you can use pre-prepared flake food as the basis of your Platys’ diet. Always buy a good quality one though and check that it contains both meat and plant derivatives. The ingredients need to be all natural too. Feeding dried food flakes to your Platy is easy and a non-messy way to do it. And if it’s good quality flake food your Platys can thrive well on this type of food alone if that’s what you choose to do.
But what about adding some extra nutrition and variety into your Platys’ diet?
How Can I Supplement My Platys’ Diet?
In addition to a good quality flake food it’s a good idea to top up the nutrients and vary things a bit. To keep it easy for you, but nutritious for your fish, you can add dried vegetable pellets, tubifex worms, blood worms, and brine shrimp for example.
I was advised by a friend of mine who’s kept fish for years to use dried, frozen or freeze-dried worms and shrimp. Apart from being less messy than the fresh variety you also reduce the risk of introducing bacteria and parasites into the aquarium. Both of which can be a risk with fresh worms and shrimp.
You can also make your own veggie food supplement as a treat for your Platy fish.
How often you vary your Platys’ diet will depend on you and your fish. But remember that you’re varying their diet, not adding to it. You don’t want to overfeed them. Just feed them well.
What Do Baby Platy Fish Eat?
Baby Platy fish (fry) are as easy to feed as the adults are. They will eat the same food as the adults. But it’s helpful to the fry if you break down the food into smaller pieces. This will give the fry a chance to eat their meal.
You can use powdered dry food formulated for live bearing fish if you like. Or you can just scrunch down your normal dry flake food into tiny pieces. It’s easy to do. You just scrunch it down in the palm of your hand into tiny powdery-sized pieces before putting it into your aquarium.
If you want to supplement your baby Platys’ diet just be sure that any brine shrimp or daphnia are the newly hatched ones and that any veggie additions are of an appropriate size for the fry to eat. Again, it’s important to avoid contamination in the tank from bacteria and parasites. So frozen or freeze-dried protein is often the best option when it comes to the meaty protein part of their diet.
Fry are pretty tough so they do tend to manage well. But if you want to save as many baby Platys as you can, make sure some of the food you add to your aquarium at meal times is small enough for the fry to eat. Also give the fry lots of places to hide away from the adult Platys in the tank until they grow big enough to fend for themselves.
Can Platy Fish Eat Goldfish Food Flakes?
This is something that I wanted to know myself because goldfish flakes are readily available and, for the most part, inexpensive. It’s easy to buy a big pot of goldfish flake food even from your local supermarket. But will Platys eat them and do they provide a good diet for Platy fish?
The simple answer to whether your Platys are likely to eat them is ‘Yes’. When it comes to whether goldfish flake food will provide your fish with a nutritious diet, the answer is a little more complicated.
Goldfish flakes often have a high cereal content along with the protein and vegetable content. So it’s important to choose a goldfish flake food that has enough vegetable and protein (e.g fish/crustaceans) but a minimum of cereal content. This means that goldfish food that contains a lot of cereal, rice in particular, should be avoided when it comes to feeding your Platys. Even if you’re supplementing their diet with other food stuffs a high cereal content is generally not a good idea in a Platy diet.
If you have a community aquarium with other types of fish that thrive well on goldfish flake food, and you don’t want to buy several different pots of flake food, just be sure to buy a good quality goldfish flake that contains enough vegetables and protein to satisfy your Platys’ needs.
Can Platys Eat Tropical Fish Food Flakes?
Even though a lot of Platys are happy to live in a temperate tank they are actually small tropical fish. So flake food designed to meet the nutritional needs of tropical fish are an acceptable staple for the Platy diet.
The same rule applies to buying tropical flake food as it does to choosing a suitable goldfish flake for your Platys. Check the proportion of vegetables and protein to give your Platys a healthy diet and make sure the food is of good quality.
Can Platys Eat Temperate Fish Food Flakes?
I adopted my Platy fish from my son. He’s got a large temperate community tank with several kinds of non-aggressive fish that all live happily together. And his Platys, being prolific breeders, decided to increase the population of the community aquarium by producing lots and lots of baby Platy fry.
The staple diet of all the fish in the aquarium was Love Fish Temperate Food Flakes. Because my Platys had been reared on this I continued to buy the same temperate flake food. It’s a reputable flake food that’s packed full of good stuff to keep temperate fish healthy. There are other brands of temperate food flakes, but because my little fish were happy and healthy on this one I decided to keep it as a staple part of their diet.
Do Platy Fish Eat Algae?
Algae, as I’ve discovered, is something that needs to be kept under control. Although it’s natural for algae to grow in an aquarium, too much of it is a bad thing.
There are different types of algae that will grow naturally in your tank. Some are good in moderation and some not so good.
Even though Platy fish do eat some types of algae, they’re not the kind of fish that you add to your aquarium as algae eaters in an effort to keep the algae under control. Your Platy will happily nibble away at the algae that develops in your tank. But, because the Platy is an omnivorous fish, algae alone will not satisfy your Platy’s appetite and nutritional needs
So you need to keep the tank environment clean and healthy. This includes not only the water quality, but also the substrate (gravel), plants, glass sides and tank ornaments. In fact anything at all that is inside your aquarium.
By doing this you will keep on top of algae growth and your tank will provide an attractive and healthy environment for your fish.