Q:  What food(s) should I feed my cichlids?

A:  Feed pellets, pellets provide densely packed nutrition and produce much less waste in your tank than flake or even frozen foods.  Knowing your fishes diet type is also important to ensure proper health of your fish!  Cichlids fall under all three basic types of diet - Carnivores, Omnivores, and Herbivores.  Treat your fish occasionally with frozen foods similar to what they normal eat in nature, such as insects/larvae, invertabrates or plant material such as romaine lettuce or shelled peas.  

Avoid feeding mammalian fats & proteins to fish, while these can spur a rapid increase in growth, these foods are not healthy for them.  No cichlid has evolved the proper digestive system to process mammalian fats & protein correctly, so like junk food may clog our arteries, it can cause health problems as the fish age due to bad nutrition.

 Today there are at least two foods designed for ALL cichlid diet types!  The most popular is New Life Spectrum - Cichlid forumla  and a less common newer competitor is Dianichi.  These foods can be used safely with the strictest herbivores and still provide adequate nutrition for carnivores and omnivores.