best food to get for my tank?

[nwin]

Ok, so here's what I currently have in my 14g biocube:

 

different types of snails (nassarius, cerite)

1 blue legged hermit

1 cleaner shrimp

1 peppermint shrimp

 

What I plan on getting eventually:

 

yellow head jawfish

2 clownfish

 

So, for the immediate, what should I plan on getting for food? My LFS will *hopefully* get the jawfish this week. I've heard of mysis shrimp being thrown around a lot. Is this freeze dried or frozen or what?

[91mini]

Mysis shrimp with a mix of pellet's like new life spectrum would be good. I always strain my mysis before feeding though. Helps keep the tank cleaner.

 

Good luck with the cleaner and peppermint shrimp. Mine ate feverishly but I could not seem to keep one for long. I had a cleaner that came out and ate alongside the fish at every feeding (flakes, mysis and pellets) and a peppermint that I bought because I had 7-8 pieces of aptasia show up. He devoured them all in 1 night but only lived 1-2 months after.

[Kfmmartin19]

Mysis is good. I have also heard great things about New Life Spectrum. I personally do a mix of Ocean Nutrition Formula 1 and Formula 2 Flakes during the week and frozen mysis on the weekend. If you do the Formula 1 and Formula 2 mix then the fish get seafood and veggies, so it's a good balanced diet. Ocean Nutrition is a great brand. Look at their website and you can get some ideas.

[nwin]

Alright, so I see one person saying flakes, and one pellets...why the difference?

 

Also, it's frozen mysis I should be looking for and not freeze dried, correct?

[godfathernikki]

Alright, so I see one person saying flakes, and one pellets...why the difference?

 

Also, it's frozen mysis I should be looking for and not freeze dried, correct?

 

Pellots sink, better for bottom feeders and fish that hang out in the substrate, like the jawfish and nassarius snails. Flake floats and are better for things that hang out in the water column like the clownfish.

 

And yes frozen. IME freesedried foods dont seem to attract the fish too much.

[Tenor]

When you get new fish from LFS it's not ready to eat flake or pellet food yet. You will have to feed them with mysis for awhile before training them to eat pellet or flake food.

[nwin]

Ok sounds good. I have had pellet and flakes for my freshwater before, just new to saltwater.

 

So, since I'll be having a jawfish and clownfish, do I need to get both flakes and pellets? In my experience with FW, usually some flakes would sink down past the top and mid level swimmers and the guys on the bottom would eat those. However with pellets, they sink immediately so my top and mid level guys never really had a chance to grab em.

[91mini]

If it was me I'd go with pellets. My clown eats them from the top of the water before they sink and as they sink he races to get them. My gramma only gets them while they are sinking and my blenny grabs them from the bottom. CUC takes care of the rest. Flakes mostly do not sink and eventually wind up in your filter floss or other media and just stay there until you clean them up. I try to stay away from anything that will find it's way into a place to rot.

 

The only time I really fed flakes is when I had a cleaner shrimp. I would put one flake in when feeding and he would dart to the top and scoop it up.