If you’re planning to have a goldfish baby or fry hatch in your aquarium tank, it’s very crucial to know what to feed them. When they hatch from their eggs, they’ll start swimming looking for food right away.
So what do goldfish fry eat? It depends on their age. The first week, the best food to feed baby goldfish fry is infusoria and brine shrimp. After the first week and onwards, you can feed them mosquito wrigglers. Second week and onwards, daphnia can be fed to them.
What To Feed Goldfish Fry The First Week?
During the first week is very crucial for the goldfish fry. This is when they hatch from their egg and see the world for the first time. When they are born, instinct kicks in and they will start swimming looking for food right away. During this time, you should feed them the best live food available. Below are the recommended live foods for baby goldfish when they are born and during the first week.
Brine Shrimp
Besides high nutrition values, brine shrimps are plentiful to find. They can be found at your local pet store or online. If buying online, make sure to buy brine shrimps from a trusted retailer and always make sure they guarantee the quality of their brine shrimps.
Whether you’re buying online or locally, brine shrimps can be bought as live food and freeze-dried food. For best results and a healthier fish, it’s best to buy live brine shrimps. Live brine shrimps have more nutritions that freeze-dried brine shrimps will.
However, freeze-dried brine shrimps are still good food for goldfish fry, but it’s best to give it to them when they’re about a month old and onward. Again, make sure to check the quality before purchasing them. You want the best food with the highest quality for your goldfish fry. Happier and healthier fish live a long life and less prone to diseases.
Infusoria
Another great food for goldfish fry is infusoria. Infusoria are micro aquatic creatures natural found in aquarium water. These include small invertebrates, protozoa, ciliates, euglenoids, and unicellular algae. These creatures are so small that you won’t be able to see it with your eyes. However, the goldfish fry will be able to see them clearly.
Infusoria are rarely found at stores. This feed is usually cultured at home and very easy to make. To culture infusoria for goldfish fry at home, you’ll need an empty jar filled with vegetable matter such as lettuce, leaves of potatoes and tomatoes, and plant leaves. After gathering all the vegetable matters and putting them in the jar, fill the jar with established aquarium water. Aquarium water naturally has infusoria in them, but you’ll want to culture them so there are a lot of them to feed to your goldfish fry. Leave it on the window sill for a couple of days, in direct sunlight to increase infusoria production. When the water in the jar begins to turn cloudy or green, that’s a sign that the infusoria is ready to be harvested.
When harvesting them, simply take an eyedropper or turkey baster and sip some of the water from the jar. Since there are thousands of infusoria in a single sip, you don’t want to sip too much. Just a small drop is enough to feed all the goldfish fry. Feed them a drop or two twice daily and that should be enough food to help them grow quickly and healthy.
What To Feed Goldfish Fry The Second Week?
During the second week, goldfish fry is growing larger which will allow them to eat larger prey. Mosquito wrigglers are the best food to give to them at this age. Besides mosquitos wrigglers, you can still feed them brine shrimp and infusoria. To give them all the nutrition that they need, it’s a good idea to give them a variety of food daily. You can offer them brine shrimp today and mosquito wrigglers tomorrow.
Mosquito Wrigglers
Mosquito wrigglers or known also as mosquito larvae are an aquatic creature with a large head, slender body, and hang just below the surface of the water. When disturbed, they will wriggle themselves downward, which is how they got their name “mosquito wrigglers”. For more about mosquito wrigglers, take a look here.
These aquatic creatures are high in nutrition and if you are able to get enough of them, the goldfish fry growth speed can be doubled. Since these are seasonal feeders, it will be probably very hard to find them during the winter months.
To feed mosquito wrigglers to the goldfish fry, simply place the egg rafts in the aquarium. The goldfish fry will start to chase and eat them. Mosquito wrigglers will usually move downward at a speed where the fry can catch them easily.
Mosquito wrigglers grow fast as well and they can double their size within a couple of hours. If you let them grow or they are not eaten by the fry, they will grow large enough where the fry can’t any longer eat them. For this reason, make sure to put just enough of the egg rafts so the fry can eat all of them.
What To Feed Goldfish Fry The Third Week?
During this week, the stomach of the goldfish fry is more developed and able to consume and digest bigger prey. At this age, they can basically eat what adult goldfish can eat. However, you’ll want to feed them high nutritious live food such as daphnia and microworms. These live foods contain a lot of nutrition that the goldfish fry still need for growth.
Daphnia
Daphnia is a small freshwater crustacean found in ponds, small creeks, and still water. These crustaceans can be so abundant at times where it will make the water appears red color.
Daphnias are highly nutritious and can help goldfish fry develop quickly. However, the supply of daphnia can be uncertain. One day there could be a lot of daphnia in the water, and the next day, there will be none.
Since these small crustaceans are not usually sold in stores, you will have to culture them. By culturing them, you’ll have an endless supply of highly nutritious feed for your goldfish fry.
Microworms
Like daphnia, microworms are not usually sold in stores. The only way to get microworms is to culture them yourself at home.
To start culturing them at home, you’ll need to get a starter culture from an aquarium shop or online such as Matured Microworm Culture, which you can get at Amazon.
Once you have the starter culture, simply place a thin layer of soaked oatmeal at the bottom of the container. At the top of the oatmeals, sprinkle some dried yeast which is for the microworms to feed on. Then add the starter culture to the mix and put a lid on top of the culture. Make some small air holes in the lid for the nematodes to breath.
You should let it sit for about a week or so, and the white film of microworms will start forming on the side of the containers. Scrape them off with a spoon and stir them into the water so they separate first. Then take a spoon and scoop some of the microworms and place it in the aquarium for the goldfish fry to eat.
Can Goldfish Fry Eat Artificial Fish Food?
Yes, baby goldfish can eat artificial fish food. However, it’s not recommended as it doesn’t provide much nutrition like live food well. Artifical food should be given to them as a last resort when live food isn’t available.
As for some varieties of fancy goldfish, they will not develop properly on an artificial food diet. Fancy goldfish are bred to have beautiful shiny scales and elegant fins. For that reason, they require high-quality food to be fed to them daily. Artificial foods will contain the necessary nutrition, but it doesn’t have high-quality nutrition that is only found in live foods.
How Much To Feed Goldfish Fry?
Feeding goldfish fry isn’t that hard as it seems. All you really need to do is set a schedule to feed them daily. For goldfish fry, they should be fed as much as they can eat. For best results, feed them 2-3 times daily for the first few weeks. Afterward, they can be fed twice a day.
When feeding them, make sure you put enough live food into the tank so all the goldfish fry can eat them. During feeding, monitor them closely to make sure all fry gets a chance to eat the food. Some goldfish fry is slower than others and will never get a chance to eat it.
After the first meal, give them some more food, but this time, just half the amount. This is to ensure all the live foods get eaten. If you put too much, the ones that don’t get eaten will usually swim for cover to hide.
Conclusion
Feeding goldfish fry high-quality food is very important to the health of the goldfish. Starting them off with high-quality food will ensure they are healthy as an adult and live a long life. Goldfish are known to live 25 years or more so it’s important to give them only quality fish food, especially when they are a fry.
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.