What are the nutrients flowerhorn needs?

The Nutrients that flowerhorn needs

1. CARBOHYDRATES & FATS - are the most important energy sources in the food. However, if an oversupply occurs, especially FAT, it gets enriched with the body and can lead to fattening and organ damage. Therefore, the food should be low in fat ( best below 6% ). Exemption : Food for rearing young fish may contain up to 8 % fat.

2. PROTEIN - consist of long chain amino acids. The protein chains dissolve into separate amino acids during digestion. The fish absorbs the amino acids, which the fish uses for BUILDING UP muscles. Rich-in-protein food is real " power nutrition " for very fish. Animal protein is usually faster & easier to digest than vegetable protein. Thus, fish that mainly feed on meat or on other fish have only short, straight bowels. Herbivore fish ( pleco ) have long, spirally wound bowels. These difference have to be considered to provide nutrition according to the requirements of the fish.

3. TRACE ELEMENTS - fulfill different functions in the body. Regarded as "tools" of the organism, they are indispensable part of enzymes. Trace elements are, as the name implies, only required in very small amount.

4. MINERALS - ( e.g. calcium ) are important for building up of the skeleton & therefore, the healthy growth of the fish.

5. BALLAST SUBSTANCES - have no direct nutritional value for the fish, yet they are very important: They have an effective defense against inertia of the bowels, which will otherwise cause intestinal complication. Bowel inertia occurs, for example, feeding discus cichlids or flowerhorn only with foods low in ballast substance, such as scraped beef heart, for over a prolonged period, this is a severe unbalanced source of nutrition.

6. VITAMINS - is a generic term from entirely different active substance, which they have nothing in common at all. They possess many different functions & each required amount differs strongly from other. A lack of one vitamin cannot compensate with an oversupply of another vitamin, thus food rich with multi vitamins is needed.