In their natural habitat in the wild, Guppies are omnivores. As such, they’ll eat almost anything you offer them. They’ll eat meat-based foods as well as plant-based foods.
Live foods provide a much-needed source of nutrients for guppies. In the wild, guppies will eat a wide variety of live foods. Some of their favorites include:
- Insect larvae
- Invertebrates
- Diatoms
- Brine shrimp
Commercial foods are available in an endless selection. Not only do you have a variety of manufacturers to choose from, but you also have a large selection of different kinds of commercial foods.
You also have the option of preparing food at home for your guppies. It can be time-consuming, though. If you want healthier and more vibrant colored fish, you might consider making their food at home. However, the commercial foods on the market today are of high quality and full of nutrients.
Guppies in the wild like to nibble on the soft algae that grow on plants. Stocking your aquarium with an abundance of live aquatic plants will serve as an additional organic food source for your adult guppies as well as any guppy fry you may have.
Make sure you don’t overfeed your guppies. Overfeeding can lead to constipation and excess waste, which will ultimately disrupt the water chemistry in your tank.
Best Commercial Guppy Food Reviews
When looking at commercial guppy food, you want ingredients that provide maximum amounts of protein, vitamins, minerals, and fats.
Adult guppies love freeze-dried blood worms. They are a great source of fat, and you should only feed it to your guppies in small amounts. You can feed it to your fry as well, which will greatly improve their growth rate.
If you are conditioning your guppies, freeze-dried tubifex worms make an excellent treat once a week. However, do not feed your fish live tubifex worms because they can carry harmful bacteria that could kill your fish.
Flake Food
The most popular commercial food amongst hobbyists is flake foods. Flake foods come packed with minerals and vitamins high in the proteins necessary for your guppies to stay healthy. With high-quality flake foods, you only need to feed your guppies once a day.
Also, make sure to keep an eye on the expiration date of the flake food. The potency of the vitamins and minerals in expired foods will diminish significantly.
Veggie Pellets
Another addition to your guppy’s diet should be veggie pellets. They are high in calcium and iron, as well as vitamins B, C, D, and E. Most brands include greens such as kelp or algae, spirulina, plankton, and various vegetables.
Spirulina Tablets
Spirulina tablets contain natural carotenoid pigments, which will enhance your fish’s natural colors. It will also give your guppies healthier tails and fins, as well as resistance to skin infections.
New Life Spectrum Optimum Flakes
With all-natural preservatives, no artificial preservatives, colors, or flavors, this high-quality flake food if perfect for your marine and freshwater fish. Due to their positive buoyancy, the majority of the flakes float rather than sinking to the bottom.
New Life Spectrum contains garlic to support a healthy immune system, a variety of seaweed and algae, as well as marine proteins that are easily digestible. Naturally enhances your fish’s coloring. Made in the USA.
Hikari Usa Tropical Fancy Guppy For Pet Health
With soft granules, the Hikari USA Tropical Fancy food is perfect for guppy fry, juvenile, and adult fish. The ingredients contain everything needed for healthy guppies, including stabilized vitamin C, which supports a healthy immune system.
It also contains linolenic acid, which promotes growth, as well as seaweed-derived iodine, to improve overall conditioning.
It’s also ideal for livebearers such as guppies, platies, mollies, and swordtails. Rich in protein, these semi-floating granules do not cloud your tank water. The pellets sink very slowly, giving the fish plenty of time to eat before it reaches the bottom of your tank.
The small pellets act like a sponge and absorb water, making the texture soft without completely dissolving. The food stays together and doesn’t lose any nutrients to the water.
Aquacarium Brine Shrimp
Aquacarium Brine Shrimp is an excellent treat for all fish, whether saltwater or freshwater. Freshly dried and all-natural, this food is made up of large cubed brine shrimp, which can be broken into smaller pieces.
Your larger fish can enjoy it whole, while smaller fish will be able to pick it apart. This high-quality fish food is perfect for conditioning your fish for breeding.
Brine shrimp is a great source of protein and can be fed to both your adult and fry once or twice a week.
API Fish Food Pellets
Perfect for meeting all nutritional needs, API offers a complete and balanced diet for your small tropical community fish. API combines high-quality shrimp and squid proteins to encourage optimal growth.
It contains an enhanced protein that allows easy and maximum absorption of nutrients, resulting in the fish releasing less ammonia.
This will help keep the water in your tank cleaner and clearer, which means your fish will have a healthier environment, ensuring they stay healthy as well.
API pellets are formulated to sink slowly. They are easily digestible, and they enhance your guppy’s natural coloring.
Tropical Micro Pellet Fish Food
Tropical Micro Pellets are perfect for mimicking your guppy’s diet in their natural habitat while meeting their dietary needs. With a new Qik Color formula, the micropellets are small and multi-colored, perfect for tropical fish with small mouths.
Tropical Micro Pellets offer an ultimate blend of carefully selected proteins, including many beneficial algae. The micro coating locks in nutrition and gives the semi-floating pellets a texture that’s easily digestible, eliminating constipation worries.
With a unique mixture of vegetable and marine proteins that have been chosen specially, these pellets are perfect for feeding guppies, who have high energy needs. Krill and spirulina have been added to enhance your fish’s natural colors.
Fish at all water levels will be able to enjoy these slow sinking pellets. The remainder of the food that settles on the bottom of the tank will not cause water clouding and will not affect the water chemistry.
Homemade Guppy Food
If you want more control over the ingredients in your guppy’s food, you can make your own fish food at home. Making homemade fish flake foods is simple, although it can be time-consuming.
In a feed processor, combine fish liver oil, vitamins, spirulina, vegetables, daphnia, fish meal, and bone meal and make a paste out of the ingredients.
Place parchment paper on a cookie sheet and spread the paste out in a thin layer. You can then place it in the oven and bake it at 250° until it has completely dried out. After it has dried, crush it into small flakes and give it to your guppies on a daily basis.
Guppy Fry Food
The guppy fry’s diet should contain a variety of freeze-dried foods and live foods. Some of the most popular fry foods are:
- Fry flake food
- Freeze-dried tubifex
- Microworms
- Vinegar eels
- Live daphnia
- Live or freeze-dried baby brine shrimp
Another fry-friendly food is egg yolk paste. To make it, all you need to do is crush the egg yolk of a hard-boiled egg into a paste. If you opt for this fry food, make sure you only give it to your fry in tiny amounts because it can contaminate your tank water very quickly if it’s not eaten immediately.
Can You Feed Vegetables to Guppies?
As omnivores, guppies have no problem eating vegetables. Vegetables are actually good for your guppies. When feeding your guppies vegetables, you want to remove the soft parts that can come apart in the water prior to feeding. For cucumbers and zucchinis, you want to scrape out the soft middle parts and only use the firm parts of the vegetables.
You can very easily make homemade vegetable flake food with the following ingredients:
- Broccoli
- Cucumber
- Green beans
- Zucchini
- Peas
- Carrots
- Spinach
- Lettuce
- Romaine lettuce
- Sweet potato
- Pumpkin
You can use both fresh and frozen vegetables. Using your blender, blend them all together. You can store your blended vegetables in a sealed bag and place it in the freezer. When your vegetable blend has frozen completely, you can chop off small bits and feed them to your fish. Be sure to remove any food that does not get eaten from the tank. Otherwise, the leftovers will contaminate the water.
As an alternative, you can also make flake food from your vegetable blend. Instead of freezing the mixture, you can spread the blend on a parchment covered cookie sheet and place it in the oven. Bake it at 250° until the mixture has dried out completely. When the blend has dried completely, you can crush it into small bits and store it in an airtight container or a resealable bag.
How Often Do Guppies Need to Eat?
Adult guppies will eat whenever you offer them food. But you don’t need to feed them that often. Feeding them too much can cause health issues and will contaminate the tank water.
You only need to feed adult guppies two to four times a day. Once in the morning and once at night should spread the feedings out adequately. Because guppies breed quickly, and they are livebearers, they need to eat nutritious foods.
If you don’t separate the fry from the adults, the adults very likely will eat the babies. You need to make sure that the adults have been fed adequately when the juveniles are sharing the same tank.
Because the fry grow so quickly, they will need to be fed more often than the adult guppies. You will want to schedule about five to eight feedings every day.
Consider removing them to a smaller tank to protect them from the larger, hungrier adults. This will also prevent the adults from eating the fry’s food during their frequent feedings.
If you’re planning a vacation, you don’t need to worry about feeding your guppies. They can survive without food for two weeks. However, there is a product called “vacation block food” if you would rather not leave them for two weeks without food. This block of food has been pre-formed and designed to slowly dissolve in the water, releasing only small bits of food into the water at a time.
How Much to Feed Guppy Fish?
Guppies love to eat and will eat as much as you give them. You want to provide them with only small amounts that they can finish eating in a minute or two, then remove any uneaten food that is left.
When you give your guppies live foods such as brine shrimp or blood worms, you will want to divide them up into multiple doses, don’t throw too much in the tank at one time.
If your guppies develop full and puffy stomachs, you might consider skipping the next feeding and reduce the amount you are giving them with each feeding.
On the other hand, if some of the food is going uneaten and sinks to the bottom of your tank, you are probably overfeeding your guppies. This can cause constipation in your fish, as well as making them uncomfortable and sluggish.
Plus, leftover food can end up contaminating your tank’s water. Letting the guppy food pile up on the bottom of the tank will eventually cause problems.
Conclusion
When you choose the right foods for your guppies, not only will they be healthy, but they will also grow big and have enhanced coloring. You want to choose food that has a good variety of vitamins, minerals, and proteins for a healthy immune system. With their high levels of activity, giving your guppies Omega-3’s will give them the added energy boost they love.
Feeding your omnivores a well-balanced diet of meats, vegetables, and organic matter will keep your guppies happy and healthy for a long time.
