The Best Goldfish Food

If you’ve read our article on what goldfish eat, you’ll know that it’s important for your goldfish to have a balanced diet, and that this can best be achieved through a combination of flake foods, pellets, live foods, freeze-dried foods, and vegetables.

But with so many products on the market, how do you find the best goldfish foods? Which specific brands and types of goldfish food should you choose to buy for your goldfish?

Below, we list some of our favourite types of goldfish food, and explain why we think they represent the best goldfish food you can buy today.

Flakes: The Traditional Goldfish Food

The trouble with flake foods is that it’s easy for the nutrients from the food to leach out into the water and be lost before the goldfish has chance to eat the flakes. There is also a chance that flakes can rot in the tub if you purchase too large an amount. For this reason, we recommend goldfish flake foods that are rich in nutrients, don’t disintegrate in water too quickly, and that are available in small quantities.

Here are a few great options:

Pellets: Sinking & Floating Goldfish Food

Pellets have two advantages over flake foods. Firstly, they retain nutrients better. Where flake foods get soggy and start to disintegrate quickly in the water, pellets stay solid and keep plenty of nutrient-rich food contained within their outer shells. Secondly, pellets are available in sinking, as well as floating varieties. By choosing a sinking pellet, you allow your goldfish to consume the food underwater, rather than at the surface. This can help them to avoid swallowing air, which can be bad for their health.

These are our top goldfish pellet foods:

Live Goldfish Food

Live foods have the obvious advantage of being closest to what goldfish would eat in the wild. Insects and crustaceans are an everyday staple for wild goldfish, so it’s a good thing to give your pet goldfish a taste of this wild diet. Live goldfish foods are also of more interest to your goldfish – as they have to actually chase and catch them, rather than just swim up and eat a floating flake or pellet. Finally, live foods tend to be very rich in protein, which is great for your fish’s health.

But which live goldfish foods are best? These are our top picks:

Freeze-dried Goldfish Food

Freeze-dried food are a great compromise for those who want much of the goodness of live foods but without the hassle of keeping insects and crustaceans alive or the risk of introducing diseases to your goldfish tank. Freeze-dried food is not frozen. Instead, it has gone through a process of “freeze-drying” that removes virtually all the moisture from the food. This is great for allowing the food to be easily stored while also retaining its nutrients.

Below are three of the most popular freeze-dried food options for goldfish.

Vegetables

That’s right! Goldfish can eat “human food” too! In the same way as we eat vegetables as part of a healthy balanced diet, it’s a great idea to add some veg to your goldfish’s menu.

Goldfish will enjoy eating lots of vegetables, but we find these are the most popular:

Remember – good goldfish food is all about variety!

All of the goldfish foods above are great choices for your fish. And, of course, it’s important to choose high quality goldfish foods. To keep your goldfish healthy, we recommend only ever feeding your goldfish the best foods available.

However – even if you choose from the best goldfish foods – if you only choose one or two types of food, there is still a chance that your fish could be lacking important nutrients.

That’s why it’s so important to feed your fish a varied diet. You need variety as well as quality to ensure your fish gets everything they need from their diet.

Choosing three or four goldfish foods from those listed above would be a great place to start. And a goldfish that has a regular selection of even more of these foods – perhaps even all of them! – is a very lucky goldfish indeed!