
FOOD AND FEEDING 

Srarcuy Foops. Of the farinaceous foods, vermicelli, egg noodles, 
and the breakfast cereals are all to be recommended and when varied with 
those containing animal substances, all sparingly fed, will not only nourish 
the fishes but produce growth and vigor, and furnish the necessary variety 
of diet. 
-Many combinations may be prepared from the foregoing list; the 
best being those which contain animal, crustaceous and starchy ingredients, 
together with some digestible form of lime, preferably, the cuttle-fish bone 
used in bird cages, or finely powdered egg-shells, table and epsom or 
glauber salts; which, in combination, will furnish all the chemical constitu- 
ents necessary to the health, growth and full development of animal life, 
together with a mild laxative necessary to animals in confinement and 
deprived of the laxative salts abundant in the natural environment. Some 
successful fish culturists supply the salts and lime to the aquarium water 
by adding an occasional pinch of a powder composed of % table salt, 1% 
epsom salt and % plaster of paris. 
A considerably used German goldfish food consists of these ingredients: 
5 ounces of pea flour; 4 ounces of rice flour; 2 ounces of dried and pow- 
dered fish flesh, (herring); 14 ounce of finely dessicated dried meat fibre, 
(beef heart); 1 1% ounces of ant-eggs (pupa); 1 ounce of dried powdered 
prawn, (shrimp) or lobster; 2 ounces of dried daphnia; two raw eggs, to- 
gether with the powdered shells; 1% ounce of table salt; % ounce of 
epsom salt and sufficient gum arabic in boiling water to bind the mass; 
thoroughly kneaded into a thick dough, dried at low temperature, and 
crushed into convenient small particles. This makes about a pound 
of dried food. In feeding, the granules are steeped in lukewarm water 
and immediately fed; or they may be forced through a colinder, or other 
device to produce a vermicelli form. In the opinion of the author this 
food has rather an excess of animal substances. 
It must always be kept in mind that a variety of food is beneficial, 
fed only in sufficient quantity to satisfy the hunger of the fishes, and 
none left over after the meal to cause contaminations in the water, or to 
form a culture medium for the ever-present spores of Saprolegnia, the fun- 
gus which produces the most general external disease of fishes, or breeding 
places for other external and internal parasites. 
When Daphnia can be obtained they should be fed to the exclusion 
of any other form of live or artificial food, not only to the goldfish but to 
almost all the other freshwater fishes that can be kept in the aquarium. 
By their use the most vigorous growth will be obtained and the least 
trouble had with the aquarium and its contents. This is the unanimous 
opinion of expert aquariists. 
