Quite a few of the ingredients you listed there make up "Shrimp Mix". If you're feeling adventurous sometime you might want to try and make a batch sometime.
What is the best food??
- Thread starter FishAddictJulez
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I have a huge variety in food lol. I mix up a bunch of different veggie pellets for my mbuna and different carnivore/tropical pellets for my Tangs. I've been pretty impressive with Xtreme Aquatic foods and NLS. The mixture of foods has given me good results. My fish are growing well and are very colorful. Just read the ingredients and make sure the first ingredients are something recognizable.
I like NLS, but have Hikari on hand also for floating food. I also like Ken's spirulina and veggie flakes. I have also used Ken's spirulina with garlic + spirulina bits and HBH veggie wafers.
The NLS does enhance color nicely and fry seem to grow out faster.
The NLS does enhance color nicely and fry seem to grow out faster.
I wouldn't say any food is the "best" But there are foods with higher quality ingredients. I like Hikari when I don't have a large enough order to get NLS. I also like Omega One. I think a good staple food should be provided and my recommended choice is Hikari and NLS but that should be supplemented with live, home made, and frozen foods.
Yeah it's def. wrong to say one food is better then the other. IMO all high quality foods from all the major brands are VERY good foods such as NLS, Tetra, Omega, Hikari... they are all very good highly nutritious foods. Use what ever your fish prefer and stick to it. Of course with that said you need to mix in veggies and other food with flakes/crisps/pellets to make a good rounded diet for your fish.
OK.. Im still waitinmg on my NLS... so I am feeding the Hikari Bio+Gold.. I love that food... really makes their colors pop...
regardless of the name or brand, what you want to look for first is if there are fillers in the first 5 or more ingredients on the label. if you see anything that has the words 'gluten', 'starch', 'wheat', 'corn', 'flour', etc in the first part of the ingredients then it is most likely a lower quality food.
for example:
Omega One Veggie Flakes - ingredients: whole salmon, black cod, halibut, whole herring, fresh kelp, spirulina, wheat flour, lecithin..... the list goes on to name preservatives, supplements/vitamins, and such.
Tetra Min Tropical Crisps - Fish meal, dried yeast, corn starch, shrimp meal, wheat gluten, ground brown rice, potato protein, soybean oil, dehulled soybean meal, fish oil, guar gum, dried skim milk, sorbitol, algae meal, lecithin, krill...... goes on to name a bunch of nearly unpronounceable stuff that is supposed to be vitamins, preservatives, and the colour of the food comes from various dyes.
can you tell which of the above foods is better quality/more nutritious/a better choice? i'm not touting the Omega food line here, i just grabbed two jars of food off my tank stand as example.
for example:
Omega One Veggie Flakes - ingredients: whole salmon, black cod, halibut, whole herring, fresh kelp, spirulina, wheat flour, lecithin..... the list goes on to name preservatives, supplements/vitamins, and such.
Tetra Min Tropical Crisps - Fish meal, dried yeast, corn starch, shrimp meal, wheat gluten, ground brown rice, potato protein, soybean oil, dehulled soybean meal, fish oil, guar gum, dried skim milk, sorbitol, algae meal, lecithin, krill...... goes on to name a bunch of nearly unpronounceable stuff that is supposed to be vitamins, preservatives, and the colour of the food comes from various dyes.
can you tell which of the above foods is better quality/more nutritious/a better choice? i'm not touting the Omega food line here, i just grabbed two jars of food off my tank stand as example.
This is an open rant, not directed at one person.
Unfortunately, I think many people fall for the marketing of the pet food industry. It's number one, sales method being ---appeal to the customer's sensibilities. To many "fish meal" sounds less appealing than "whole salmon, black cod, and halibut". But the question is: Is one really more nutritious than the other? One may be more visually appealing to the imagination or sound better on a menu, but so what? In the end it's all ground up and pressed into dry flakes or pellets.
One label lists the specific fish, the other doesn't, because it was already fish meal when the manufacturing process began. I can turn swordfish into fish meal. But is swordfish meal necessarily more nutritious than, say, trout meal. I doubt it. Funny how Omega One chose fish that people like eat --salmon, cod, and halibut. Or is it an attempt to sound yummy to you, the customer?
The less successful fish-food companies have to market their foods somehow. They have to compete. And they choose to appeal to people's ideas of freshness and nutrition by using key words.
I've used a dozen fish-food brands over the years, and some do seem to make fish healthier and more colorful than others. But I take exception to people knocking the well-known brand just because it's the well-known brand.
It's interesting that many of my fish ended up colorful and healthy, and repeatedly bred, while eating the cheapest well-known brand.
People make too much of fish food brands. It's a mistake to think that because one is more expensive (or has fancy marketing) that it's better.
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