Feeding, care and maintenance are so closely tied I considered putting them under the same heading. Severums are such messy feeders, and produce such quantities of manure that the biggest problems related to feeding is maintaining water quality in the face of this bioload. Most of the solutions to this problem are covered in the maintenance section. I'll cover a few more now.
First, only feed your severums what they'll eat in five minutes or so, there are a few exceptions to this rule, but you can't go far wrong with it. Remove any lettuce, or other plant scraps laying around the tank. Get some scavengers to help clean up food. I'll cover suitable fish in tankmates, but mention 2 here; goldfish and plecostomus. Small feeder goldfish eat all those little bits of food that Severums are so good at blowing all over the tank. They also clean the plastic plants, including those nooks and crannies that a pleco can't get reach. Plecostomus, or plecos for short, keep your glass and gravel clean, mopping up uneaten food and algae wherever they go. A big pleco and several small goldfish will help allot in keeping your tank clean. Both fish are also big poopers, but manure is more benign than rotting food. Snails also make a good member of the cleaning crew, good luck maintaining a population in a severum tank, most get eaten before they can reproduce.
Now onto the food, My primary food for my fish is pelletized fish food from the pet store. Read the ingredients on the label, you want to see lots of vitamin fortification. Severums need lots of vitamins to help prevent Hole-in-head disease, one of the causes of HIH is believed to be nutritionally poor food. I use "Cichlid Ten" by Wordley, based on ingredients, availability, palatability and cost, many other suitable foods are also on the market.
Secondary foods start with your refrigerator. Severums are primarily vegetarian. They love to eat leaf lettuce, spinach, and peas. Feel free to experiment with other greens. Through trial and error I've found my fish don't like carrots, cooked or raw, or broccoli. They do love to eat most aquarium plants, some manage to live, most don't. I feed lettuce and spinach by suspending a plastic clip on the side of the tank, clip the lettuce in it, and let them tear off what they want. This is my exception to the five minute feed rule, I leave it in there all day. Don't be surprised if your boss fish hogs the lettuce clip, I had to put in a second one. Now she rushes back and forth trying to guard both clips, the other fish sneak in and feed on the unguarded one. I feed frozen peas by nuking for twenty seconds in the microwave with a little water, and drop them a few at a time in the tank. Some eat 'em skins and all others spit out the skins, the skins always get eaten later though. Severums will fight over peas.
Severums also enjoy meat in their diet. Any fish small enough to be eaten will be! Severums aren't as good at fish catching as the carnivorous fish, but don't sell them short. Mine have caught and eaten 3 inch giant danios, a very quick fish. Severums do best by cornering fish, or by stalking them after the lights are turned out, that's when my fish are at their predatory best. Goldfish make the best feeders, when they're not being eaten, they help on janitor duty. Feeder guppies are ok for younger severums, but barely a tidbit for a big one. Feeder fish impose the risk of importing disease into your tank, also dead, uneaten or partially eaten feeders rapidly foul the tank. So try to quarantine your feeder fish, or at the minimum, only buy from a reputable supplier. If your tank breaks out in "ick" from diseased feeders don't say I didn't warn you. ON the plus side, you can dump a dozen feeders in the tank and they'll keep themselves alive until consumed, you don't have to follow the "only feed what they'll eat in five minutes" rule.
Other aquatic critters also make good food. Ghost shrimp, brine shrimp, daphnia, mosquito larvae, even those little fiddler crabs you get because "they're cute" are looked at as a meal by severums. These animals also have to be looked at as potential disease carriers, and die and go bad even faster than feeder fish. Snails make excellent food, especially the small ones, severums will gladly clean up any tanks with a snail overpopulation. I look at snails with the same fondness as goldfish, a combination of scavenger and food.
Now we come to the terrestrial foods, starting with bugs and ending with cattle! Worms are great food, all the grindle, blood, micro, white, glass, etc, etc, etc.... should all work fine at one size of fish or another. Stay away from tubiflex worms, they thrive in sewage, and bring it with them into your tank, 'nuf said. Earth worms, while messy are excellent and universally available, from the garden to the baitshop.
Most bugs are relished by severums, mine like ants, termites, spiders, house flies, and ticks pulled off the dog! About the only bugs that are numerous enough to be considered more than a treat are crickets, grasshoppers, moths, and fruit flies. Crickets are available at most pet shops for feeding lizards, your severums like them just as well. Don't feed too many, my wife and I, without knowing about the other, kept feeding cricket after cricket to "Big Gal" and she ate every one. She refused to eat the next couple of days, I think the crickets constipated her! Grasshoppers get very populated in certain parts of the country every summer. If you have small kids in the neighborhood, make a game out of catching grasshoppers for the fish. As with crickets, don't over feed grasshoppers. I draw moths at night with the porchlight, again this would be a great one for kids. Unlike the crunchy grasshoppers and crickets, severums seem to be able to eat as many moths as your willing to catch and throw in the tank. Fruit flies are supposed to be easy to grow, they should make a great food for anyone with an inclination to grow them.
Shredded shellfish, fish, and meat in small quantities are also enjoyed. My wife makes a mix of ground beefheart, brine shrimp, and other goodies for her discus, my severums fight over the stuff. I also drop the occasional bit of steak, barbecued chicken, etc. in the tank, go easy on this stuff, it's greasy and I wonder if it's really good for them. Any of the foods in this paragraph should be fed in small amounts, so it all gets eaten. Rotting meat will screw up your water quality really fast, the good news is severums tend to blow less of this food back in the water than when eating pellets.
I feed my fish pellets at least twice a day, following the five minute rule. Lettuce is given free choice in the clips, two or three times a week. They'd probably do wonderful with lettuce in the clips full time, I'm just lazy. Peas are fed, again two or three times a week, four or five for big fish, less for smaller ones. Big Gal can hold six at once in her mouth, she doesn't want anybody else to get any:) Bugs are fed when any are unlucky enough to get caught. Shredded meat stuffs are fed mostly as an occasional treat, feeder fish whenever I pick a few up.
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