Can guppies eat goldfish flakes? Yes, guppies can eat goldfish flakes, but they lack certain vital nutrients that guppies need in their diet.
Tropical flakes are more nutritionally complete, and they are specifically formulated to meet the dietary needs of omnivorous fish like guppies. Goldfish food, on the other hand, is made for fish that primarily feed on plants and algae.
Best Guppy Food: Hikari Fancy Guppy Food (Click Here)
Can Guppies Eat Goldfish Food
Guppies can eat goldfish flakes, and they won’t cause any harm, but a guppy won’t thrive on goldfish food alone. Goldfish food contains less protein than regular tropical flakes since goldfish primarily consume plants and algae in their native environment.
Tropical flakes, on the other hand, serve as an excellent source of protein that guppies need to fuel their growth and development.
Female guppies also need more protein than males especially if you plan on successfully breeding them. Female guppies are livebearers which means they gestate their fry instead of laying eggs, and for this reason, they need more protein especially when they are pregnant. In addition, female guppies might not even breed at all if they aren’t eating a healthy well-rounded diet.
If you only have goldfish flakes for whatever reason then it’s fine to feed them to your guppies, but only for a limited time. Also, you want to make sure you crush the goldfish flakes up into small enough pieces so they are easy for your guppy to swallow.
Just remember that tropical flakes (Buy Online) are always the best option when it comes to feeding your guppies, and if you want to know what we feed our guppies you can scroll down to the Best Guppy Food section further down in this article.
What Do Guppies Eat in the Wild
Guppies are a tropical fish that are indigenous to North and South America. They can be found in the warm temperate waters in Brazil, Venezuela, Barbados, Virgin Islands, and Trinidad and Tobago.
What Do Guppies Eat? In their natural habitat guppies have access to a wide range of foods like plants, insects, and small microorganisms. Guppies are primarily an omnivorous fish that need to eat a wide variety of plant-based and live foods to thrive and reach their full potential.
Live Food
Guppies will eat small organisms like insect larvae, small crustaceans, small fry, and microorganisms. In the wild insect larvae make up a large portion of a guppies diet, and guppies even help control mosquito populations. Guppies even play a role in helping slow the spread of malaria in certain regions since they absolutely love eating mosquito larvae.
Brine shrimp (Buy Online) can serve as a good replacement for live insect larvae since it can be impractical to feed your guppies mosquito larvae in a home-based aquarium. It’s a good idea to feed guppies live baby brine shrimp once or twice a week, but baby brine shrimp do have a high fat and protein content, so they shouldn’t make up a large portion of your guppies diet on a daily basis.
Plant-Based Food
Do guppies eat algae? In the wild guppies have access to a wide range of plants and soft algae that they often pick at and graze on. Guppies will eat small amounts of soft algae in the wild, but by no means are they effective algae eaters. If you do have an algae issue, guppies usually won’t eat enough to control the problem, and there are better fish to handle algae in your tank like otocinclus and bristlenose plecos.
If you want to add some plant-based food to your guppies diet you can give them spirulina tablets periodically for them to nibble on. It’s also a good idea to keep guppies in a planted tank since they will pick at the algae that tends to grow on the leaves of the plants, and the plants will also give guppy fry a safe place to hide and some micro-algae to feed on.
Do Guppies Eat Flakes
Most guppies will readily eat flakes as long as they are small enough for them to easily swallow. Just make sure you get a tropical flake made for small fish since those types of flakes are made for fish with smaller mouths like guppies and neon tetras.
Sometimes you might have a picky guppy that just won’t eat flakes. Even fish can get bored of eating the same type of food every day, and adding some variety to their diet can help stimulate their appetite. In that case, you might want to try feeding them crisps or pellets.
If you’re looking for a good way to provide your fish a varied diet you can get the TetraMin 3-in-1 Select a Food (Buy Online), that contains flakes, pellets, and brine shrimp all in one convenient canister.
Guppies usually don’t need to be fed that often. Even though they might act like they are always hungry, it’s best to only feed guppies small amounts of food 1-2 times per day to keep them healthy and active. This will help reduce excess nutrients from causing ammonia spikes, and it will keep uneaten food from building up and rotting on the gravel.
Guppy fry, on the other hand, will need to be fed at least five times a day since they have smaller stomachs and faster metabolisms. Guppy fry should be fed a balanced fry food, or live food like baby brine shrimp, daphnia, microworms, and vinegar eels.
It’s best to feed guppy fry a small meal every three to four hours so they always have something to eat. While at the same time you still need to space out the feedings so they can digest the food they already have in their stomach
Guppy Fry Feeding Schedule
First Feeding – Baby Brine Shrimp
Second Feeding – Fry Food / Freeze-Dried Blood Worms
Third Feeding – Micro-algae / Crushed Spirulina
Fourth Feeding – Microworms /Daphnia / Vinegar Eel
Fifth Feeding – Fry Food / Crushed Tropical Flakes
Best Guppy Food
| Image | Name | Rating | Shop |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Hikari Fancy Guppy Food |  | |
 | Cobalt Ultra Guppy Nano Bits | |
Hikari Fancy Guppy Food
Hikari Guppy Food (Buy Online) is one of the best guppy foods on the market. This food is made up of small soft granules that are very easy for small fish like guppies to swallow. The granules also are semi-floating which makes them perfect for guppies since they are primarily surface feeders.
Hikari Guppy Food is also very nutritious since it contains 50% Protein, 8% Fat, and 2% Crude Fiber. It also contains a healthy mix of ingredients like fish meal, krill, yeast, and fish oil that help fuel a guppies growth and development.
Overall, Hikari Guppy Food is one of our top picks when it comes to feeding our guppies since it has an excellent nutritional profile, and our guppies absolutely go crazy for the easy to swallow floating pellets.
Cobalt Ultra Guppy Nano Bits
Cobalt Ultra Guppy Nano Bits (Buy Online) is a specially formulated guppy food that contains additional prebiotics and probiotics. This food is perfect for keeping guppies in peak condition for breeding, or just for bringing out their beautiful color.
Cobalt Ultra Guppy Nano Bits contain 41% protein, 6% Fat, and 4% fiber, and each floating pellet measures 0.6mm. The real stand out ingredient in this food is that they have been fortified with probiotics (B.subtilis, B. lichenformis) that help promote a healthy immune system and aid in digestion.
Adding probiotics to your guppies diet in this way can help ward off disease, and probiotics can also help a fish absorb more nutrients from their diet. Probiotics can even help stave off intestinal diseases, and in some cases, they can even help a guppy grow faster and promote breeding behavior.
TetraMin 3-in-1 Select a Food for Fish
TetraMin 3-in-1 Select a Food for Fish (Buy Online) makes it easy to provide your guppies with a nutritionally complete and varied diet. With 3 different types of food in one canister, you’ll be able to offer your guppies flakes, pellets, and freeze-dried brine shrimp.
There are two compartments of flakes, and one compartment of pellets and one compartment of brine shrimp inside the TetraMin 3-in-1 Select a Food canister. All you need to do to access each one is to turn the lid and slide the opening over the desired compartment. Then you can easily tap out some food into your fish tank for your guppies to devour.
The TetraMin 3-in-1 Select a Food system is great if you don’t want to have multiple canisters of food sitting around just to add some variety to your guppies diet. It’s also good for picky fish that won’t eat since it lets you quickly try to entice them to eat any one of the three different food options. In addition, the TetraMin 3-in-1 Select a Food is very affordable considering all the different types of food packed inside of it.
Tetra Blood Worms Freeze Dried Treat
Tetra Blood Worms Freeze Dried Treat (Buy Online) make an excellent supplemental food to add to your guppies regular diet. This freeze dried blood worm treat contains 50% Protein, 2% Fat, and 15% Fiber. In addition, Tetra Freeze-Dried Blood Worms are processed and tested to limit the risk associated with undesirable organisms that are usually found in live bloodworms. So you can rest assured they won’t harm your guppies or infect their aquatic environment.
