Mbuna fry

[atmagoulick]

Mbuna fry are known as an herbivore.  I am raising Pseudotrophus acei (ngara).  I keep them in a planted tank with cryptocorynes, swords and java moss.  They do not eat the plants.  Also, they are fed beef heart flakes.  They seem to like them.  Perhaps this behavior makes them an omnivore.  Or maybe, it is just this fry.  What do other people feed mbuna?  What is everyones experience with mbuna and plants?

[African cichlid Keeper]

I feed my Mbuna fry  algae wafers, repashy fish food, NLS pellets,flakes. And I have some java fern in with there parent and they don't touch the plants.

[Ron]

Mbuna fry are known as an herbivore.

According to who? References?

Mbuna to a large degree eat aufwuchs. What is aufwuchs? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader or the next generous poster, though I'll hint that it makes them omnivorous.

As for beef heart, I know that it's a popular option for some new world cichlid species, but I don't think it has much of a place for africans, mbuna especially. For africans, a protein source based on fish, insects, etc, is better than one based on mammals IMO.

[djlamonica]

I feed my mbuna fry a mixture of spirulina flake and brine shrimp finely ground up.  My experience with mbuna and even fake plants is they dig them up and move them all around.  Beef heart sounds a bit risky to me.

[auratus]

Mbuna are very popular fish one of the reasons is that they are adaptable,i,e. although they do best on an algaea based diet they will also live on a higher protien diet. Its general recomended not to feed things like beef heart or worms to Mbuna but my I`ve fed them tubifex worms when I was a kid and didnt know better and they were fine.