What's the alternative to beef heart in the wild?!

[Mark Woodhouse]

I was just wondering about the use of the infamous beef heart, it must be about 99.9% of serious Discus keepers that use it...What do the Discus in the wild eat because i'm not convinced that there little mouths can pull a cow in the water and devour it!...Everyone seems to use it for good growth etc but the wilds get big enough without it so what do they eat and why not just replicate that ...My Discus are fed on flakes, tetra prima granules, frozen dapnia etc and do just fine No offence to all the die hard beefhearts, i just wanted some opinions from the users to see if me or my fish are missing out on something

[Fred Goodall]

Hi Mark

Birds and the pig like animals that live on the giant "water lilly islands" after other fish "eat their fill" and "water bugs" we do not have cultures of.

[Mark Evenden]

Being "grazers" I guess they eat anything they swim over that they fancy!

It is the case with just about every captive animal / fish that they are offered
a diet that they would not find in their natural habitat.

The wild fish can grow very large, but I dont think you can compare growth in an aquarium to that in the Amazon

[Judy Sparkes]

I'm with Fred (no surprise!)

Fish are scavengers.....in your tank or in the wild a fish will eat whatever it happens upon....and while that may not often be a bovine treat....it would certainly be any wild meaty thing that found it's end in the water.

Gawd forbid....if I lose a fish in my tank....I'd better get it out of there fast or......ahem.....what's this pile of bones doing in the back corner???

I understand the controversy about feeding beef to fish for sure....but there's no second guessing the results of a good fresh beefheart mix for growing out your discus....it's just great food!

Jude

[Mark Woodhouse]

OK OK OK !.....I think i have my answer now, thanks for the info, hey Mark, do you still write for PFK?.....I used to buy that about 8 years ago and remember reading your Discus answers and thinking, did you ever get sick of answering the same old questions time and again Mind you, it was really before these kind of sites were going i suppose and it was the only way to get answers unless you bought all the books......Anyway enough of my ramblings, thanks again