Is My Fish Food Good?

Hello! I never really looked into the diets of my fish too much, but I still try my best to feed them good-quality foods. I would like to know which ingredients to look for and which ingredients to avoid. Here's a list of what I currently have.

Freshwater:

1. Tetra PlecoWafers
2. TetraMin Tropical Flakes
3. Wardley Shrimp Pellets
4. Tetra BloodWorms
5. Omega One Freeze Dried Tubifex Worms
6. Frozen Baby Brine Shrimp
7. Spirulina Powder
8. Vitachem

(leopard/zebra danios, bettas, peppered corydoras, albino rainbow shark, harlequin rasboras, pond/mystery/yellow rabbit snails, ghost shrimp, american flagfish, albino bristlenose pleco)

Saltwater:
1. HikarI Marine Herbivore Pellets
2. Vitachem
3. Frozen Mysis Shrimp

(yellow watchman goby, hermit crabs, tiger pistol shrimp, mushrooms/zoanthids/kenya trees, hitchhikers)

 

Sounds like a decent mix. Look for what the fish needs as the first ingredients. An example is bug bites for cichlids.

I would also treat with live or frozen foods once a week or so. Live is preferred. I just found out my lfs has flightless fruit fly larva so apparently cultures are common if you ask about them.

There's a billion ways to do it better, but as long as you vary the diet, you should be fine. Omega one has good flakes, bug bites when I want to do pellets, omega one for floating food, brine shrimp and frozen bloodworms to watch the fun, hikarI sinking carnivore pellets for my bottom feeders. I don't feed freeze dried anymore, it just doesn't seem like a beneficial thing to me anymore.

 

There's a hype about Ethoxyquin being carcinogenic, but all prepared foods in the US are mandated to contain it.
Too much grain can cause constipation. I tend to avoid Tetra and Wardley because of this.
I feed my fish shelled frozen peas once a week, and finely grated ZucchinI once a week. No fillers, byproducts, preservatives, etc. NorI is another favourite, I get the organic low sodium stuff from the supermarket for way cheaper than the pet store stuff.
Other than that, Omega One is my go-to flakes, Extreme for pellets.

 

Sounds like a decent mix. Look for what the fish needs as the first ingredients. An example is bug bites for cichlids.

I would also treat with live or frozen foods once a week or so. Live is preferred. I just found out my lfs has flightless fruit fly larva so apparently cultures are common if you ask about them.

There's a billion ways to do it better, but as long as you vary the diet, you should be fine. Omega one has good flakes, bug bites when I want to do pellets, omega one for floating food, brine shrimp and frozen bloodworms to watch the fun, hikarI sinking carnivore pellets for my bottom feeders. I don't feed freeze dried anymore, it just doesn't seem like a beneficial thing to me anymore.

Why doesn't freeze dried seem beneficial? From my experience, nearly every one of my fish love it.

There's a hype about Ethoxyquin being carcinogenic, but all prepared foods in the US are mandated to contain it.
Too much grain can cause constipation. I tend to avoid Tetra and Wardley because of this.
I feed my fish shelled frozen peas once a week, and finely grated ZucchinI once a week. No fillers, byproducts, preservatives, etc. NorI is another favourite, I get the organic low sodium stuff from the supermarket for way cheaper than the pet store stuff.
Other than that, Omega One is my go-to flakes, Extreme for pellets.

Are there any replacements for Tetra and Wardley? I heard that fish meal is bad. Is this true? If so, why? I will most likely switch to Omega for flakes, as my pet store has just recently been stocking it. I want to finish Tetra first, though. I've been using Wardley Shrimp Pellets and Tetra's PlecoWafers for a few years now. What would you suggest as a replacement?

 

Why doesn't freeze dried seem beneficial? From my experience, nearly every one of my fish love it.

Are there any replacements for Tetra and Wardley? I heard that fish meal is bad. Is this true? If so, why? I will most likely switch to Omega for flakes, as my pet store has just recently been stocking it. I want to finish Tetra first, though. I've been using Wardley Shrimp Pellets and Tetra's PlecoWafers for a few years now. What would you suggest as a replacement?

Most Pleco wafers are , I use Tetra.
Freeze dried foods have no moisture content, which effects digestion and can cause constipation (soak it first).
Certain frozen foods can be contaminated with parasites, bacteria, etc. I limit my frozen selection to Daphnia.
Fish meal is just ground whole fish. It's another moisture content thing that's mainly hype, considering whole fish flakes are also dehydrated.

 

Most Pleco wafers are , I use Tetra.
Freeze dried foods have no moisture content, which effects digestion and can cause constipation (soak it first).
Certain frozen foods can be contaminated with parasites, bacteria, etc. I limit my frozen selection to Daphnia.
Fish meal is just ground whole fish. It's another moisture content thing that's mainly hype, considering whole fish flakes are also dehydrated.

I usually submerge everything I feed them to make sure some of the food sinks to the bottom for my corydoras. Would this help with digestion?

 

Idk, it could be gut feeling I guess. My frozen bloodworms don't sink and they aren't really that healthy, more like candy, so how healthy is a bloodworm that floats? It just seems like a nutrient dense food should be... dense! With the exception of my floating pellets. They're designed to float and my butterflies won't touch anything that leaves the waters surface.

 

Idk, it could be gut feeling I guess. My frozen bloodworms don't sink and they aren't really that healthy, more like candy, so how healthy is a bloodworm that floats? It just seems like a nutrient dense food should be... dense! With the exception of my floating pellets. They're designed to float and my butterflies won't touch anything that leaves the waters surface.

All right. My danios and rasboras will go crazy for anything that hits the surface or sinks. My flagfish, on the other hand, only like things that sink. I make sure that the flakes go to the bottom for them.

 

I usually submerge everything I feed them to make sure some of the food sinks to the bottom for my corydoras. Would this help with digestion?

Recommended soaking time is 10 minutes average. None of my fish touch freeze dried anything except the Danios unless I soak in garlic.

 

There is nothing wrong with fish meal as an ingredient. It may be made from leftover parts of a fish but it's still nutritious. TetraMin flakes really aren't bad, Yeah they use fillers but some of what they use are pretty good like ground brown rice and pea protein. I switch between TetraMin and Omega One Tropical for my flakes. For the pellets, I use HikarI Gold and Bug Bites. I have freeze dried bloodworms but even soaked, my Betta is not crazy about them. I'd try frozen but only having the one fish, it would take forever to use up even the smallest package. I have frozen brine shrimp but I'm still working on the first cube after 6 weeks. I shave off a small piece with a razor blade and thaw it out. It usually contains 5 to 7 shrimp. The rest of the cube immediately gets wrapped and goes back in the freezer. My Betta eats it but still prefers the pelleted food over anything else. He does go crazy over live fruit flies though. Actually he tries to eat anything that goes into the tank including the small pieces of Pleco wafer I drop in for the snails. He's a pig

 

Vatiation is always a good thing. I'd add fresh vegs for the BN.

 

Hello! I never really looked into the diets of my fish too much, but I still try my best to feed them good-quality foods. I would like to know which ingredients to look for and which ingredients to avoid. Here's a list of what I currently have.

Freshwater:

1. Tetra PlecoWafers
2. TetraMin Tropical Flakes
3. Wardley Shrimp Pellets
4. Tetra BloodWorms
5. Omega One Freeze Dried Tubifex Worms
6. Frozen Baby Brine Shrimp
7. Spirulina Powder
8. Vitachem

(leopard/zebra danios, bettas, peppered corydoras, albino rainbow shark, harlequin rasboras, pond/mystery/yellow rabbit snails, ghost shrimp, american flagfish, albino bristlenose pleco)

Saltwater:
1. HikarI Marine Herbivore Pellets
2. Vitachem
3. Frozen Mysis Shrimp

(yellow watchman goby, hermit crabs, tiger pistol shrimp, mushrooms/zoanthids/kenya trees, hitchhikers)

You've got a good varied diet going on there. To be honest, the Tetramin flakes could be sufficient for everything in your freshwater tank along with some sinking pellets for the bottom dwellers. All the other foods are good as treats to vary their diet. If you do feed the fresh water fish live food once in while, only use live brine shrimp, and feed things like live blood worms to salt water fish. This eliminates the possibility of disease as brine shrimp can only carry salt water diseases to saltwater fish and blood worms can only carry freshwater disease.

 

Recommended soaking time is 10 minutes average. None of my fish touch freeze dried anything except the Danios unless I soak in garlic.

Vatiation is always a good thing. I'd add fresh vegs for the BN.

There is nothing wrong with fish meal as an ingredient. It may be made from leftover parts of a fish but it's still nutritious. TetraMin flakes really aren't bad, Yeah they use fillers but some of what they use are pretty good like ground brown rice and pea protein. I switch between TetraMin and Omega One Tropical for my flakes. For the pellets, I use HikarI Gold and Bug Bites. I have freeze dried bloodworms but even soaked, my Betta is not crazy about them. I'd try frozen but only having the one fish, it would take forever to use up even the smallest package. I have frozen brine shrimp but I'm still working on the first cube after 6 weeks. I shave off a small piece with a razor blade and thaw it out. It usually contains 5 to 7 shrimp. The rest of the cube immediately gets wrapped and goes back in the freezer. My Betta eats it but still prefers the pelleted food over anything else. He does go crazy over live fruit flies though. Actually he tries to eat anything that goes into the tank including the small pieces of Pleco wafer I drop in for the snails. He's a pig

You've got a good varied diet going on there. To be honest, the Tetramin flakes could be sufficient for everything in your freshwater tank along with some sinking pellets for the bottom dwellers. All the other foods are good as treats to vary their diet. If you do feed the fresh water fish live food once in while, only use live brine shrimp, and feed things like live blood worms to salt water fish. This eliminates the possibility of disease as brine shrimp can only carry salt water diseases to saltwater fish and blood worms can only carry freshwater disease.

Thank you I forgot to add that I feed them blanched spinach and cucumbers whenever they run out.

 

You've got a good varied diet going on there. To be honest, the Tetramin flakes could be sufficient for everything in your freshwater tank along with some sinking pellets for the bottom dwellers. All the other foods are good as treats to vary their diet. If you do feed the fresh water fish live food once in while, only use live brine shrimp, and feed things like live blood worms to salt water fish. This eliminates the possibility of disease as brine shrimp can only carry salt water diseases to saltwater fish and blood worms can only carry freshwater disease.

HikarI makes bio pure bloodworms. They're lab cultures so no worries about disease.

 

HikarI makes bio pure bloodworms. They're lab cultures so no worries about disease.

I agree. HikarI is the brand I use and the can says they also contain bioencapsulated nutrients.

 

As mentioned there's a lot of hype about Ethoxyquin. If you really want to avoid it, New Life Spectrum is coming out with a line that uses a different preservative. Northfin claimed they didn't have any in their product but there were threads a year or two ago about someone finding test results showing they lied about it and that sample had more than is generally accepted for pet foods.

I read a bunch of threads on food. If you search on monsterfishkeepers and look for posts by a guy named "RD" you can learn more than you would probably want to learn about food.

I have some Tetra foods and the reason it's considered subpar is it contains a lot of junk that the fish don't process well if at all rather than good ingredients. First ingredient is fish meal, which is good. Then they break up a bunch of filler material into separate ingredients probably because if combined it could make up a larger proportion that the fish meal: Dehulled soybean meal, wheat germ meal, wheat flour, corn gluten, feeding oat oeal, potato protein. All that junk until another desirable ingredient: shrimp meal.

Compare that to what are considered higher quality products. This includes the above maligned Northfin. That company does use quality ingredients but I don't like the dishonesty that was discovered and how they respond (or more accurately didn't.) It probably is still a good food.

New life spectrum is another good food check out this ingredient list from the Community fish 1mm sinking pellets that I have: (listed in order)
Whole Antarctic Krill, Whole Fish, Whole Wheat flour, Ulva seaweed, Chlorella algae...

As I understand it, the Whole Wheat flour is used as a binding material. It's not split up into several ingredients of filler so the first two ingredients do have the highest proportion and that's stuff the fish actually should be eating.

I wanted to throw my old food away:
I go back and forth with this especially because I have two huge bottles of Tetra left. I don't want to waste the food so I'm feeding it along with the better foods I now have. I also give frozen food because I enjoy watching the fish eat it. Also I keep rainbowfish and that someone like Gary Lange gives frozen krill, bloodworms, mysis and brine several times a week to his fish carries weight with me.

I'm going to use up my remaining lower quality food also because it's not like it's poison. I kept fish for over twenty years on this supposed junk food so I know it's not going to hurt them if I finish this off.

I just want to give better foods now that know better.

 

HikarI makes bio pure bloodworms. They're lab cultures so no worries about disease.

I do love Hikari's food. I'll most likely switch back to them for wafers, pellets, and possibly the bloodworms you suggested. Thanks

 

As mentioned there's a lot of hype about Ethoxyquin. If you really want to avoid it, New Life Spectrum is coming out with a line that uses a different preservative. Northfin claimed they didn't have any in their product but there were threads a year or two ago about someone finding test results showing they lied about it and that sample had more than is generally accepted for pet foods.

I read a bunch of threads on food. If you search on monsterfishkeepers and look for posts by a guy named "RD" you can learn more than you would probably want to learn about food.

I have some Tetra foods and the reason it's considered subpar is it contains a lot of junk that the fish don't process well if at all rather than good ingredients. First ingredient is fish meal, which is good. Then they break up a bunch of filler material into separate ingredients probably because if combined it could make up a larger proportion that the fish meal: Dehulled soybean meal, wheat germ meal, wheat flour, corn gluten, feeding oat oeal, potato protein. All that junk until another desirable ingredient: shrimp meal.

Compare that to what are considered higher quality products. This includes the above maligned Northfin. That company does use quality ingredients but I don't like the dishonesty that was discovered and how they respond (or more accurately didn't.) It probably is still a good food.

New life spectrum is another good food check out this ingredient list from the Community fish 1mm sinking pellets that I have: (listed in order)
Whole Antarctic Krill, Whole Fish, Whole Wheat flour, Ulva seaweed, Chlorella algae...

As I understand it, the Whole Wheat flour is used as a binding material. It's not split up into several ingredients of filler so the first two ingredients do have the highest proportion and that's stuff the fish actually should be eating.

I wanted to throw my old food away:
I go back and forth with this especially because I have two huge bottles of Tetra left. I don't want to waste the food so I'm feeding it along with the better foods I now have. I also give frozen food because I enjoy watching the fish eat it. Also I keep rainbowfish and that someone like Gary Lange gives frozen krill, bloodworms, mysis and brine several times a week to his fish carries weight with me.

I'm going to use up my remaining lower quality food also because it's not like it's poison. I kept fish for over twenty years on this supposed junk food so I know it's not going to hurt them if I finish this off.

I just want to give better foods now that know better.

Thanks for the information! I'll definitely try to look for some better ingredients. I don't think my pet store stocks Northfin, though. They can be found online, right?

 

Another thing about, say "Salmon Meal" vs "Whole Salmon" is that the whole fish contains more water. This is a good thing for frozen foods, but in flake foods it's used as a way of making the ingredients list look more desirable than it is.
Ingredient lists are ordered so that the highest concentrations (by weight) are first in the list. Turning whole fish into fish meal extracts like 75% of the water, so the resulting fish meal is lighter while still containing the same amount of fish. Whole Fish as the first ingredient may contain the same "amount" of fish as a different food with Fish Meal as the second or third ingredient.
While this seems like a bad thing, extracting all that water beforehand is very likely to reduce the amount of fish oil and water-soluble trace nutrients by a drastic amount.

 

Another thing about, say "Salmon Meal" vs "Whole Salmon" is that the whole fish contains more water. This is a good thing for frozen foods, but in flake foods it's used as a way of making the ingredients list look more desirable than it is.
Ingredient lists are ordered so that the highest concentrations (by weight) are first in the list. Turning whole fish into fish meal extracts like 75% of the water, so the resulting fish meal is lighter while still containing the same amount of fish. Whole Fish as the first ingredient may contain the same "amount" of fish as a different food with Fish Meal as the second or third ingredient.
While this seems like a bad thing, extracting all that water beforehand is very likely to reduce the amount of fish oil and water-soluble trace nutrients by a drastic amount.

Thank you. Is whole fish better for digestion because of the water or are they both the same?

 

My favorite foods:
Omega One(Flakes)
NLS(Pellets)
Hikari(Frozen)
Homemade food

 

Thank you. Is whole fish better for digestion because of the water or are they both the same?

By the time they crumble the flakes, the water content is pretty much 0.
As for containing more fish oils than those that use fish meal, only the companies know.

 

Cardeater has done extensive, painstaking research on this very topic. Your food is fine.

Meal is better than whole fish, as it is after most of the water is drained. Marketing is tough. You should try dog food. The only website that does compile the data for you has an agenda and confuses things often. It's the reason things like blue buffalo are popular for toy breeds.

 

By the time they crumble the flakes, the water content is pretty much 0.
As for containing more fish oils than those that use fish meal, only the companies know.

Cardeater has done extensive, painstaking research on this very topic. Your food is fine.

Meal is better than whole fish, as it is after most of the water is drained. Marketing is tough. You should try dog food. The only website that does compile the data for you has an agenda and confuses things often. It's the reason things like blue buffalo are popular for toy breeds.

I'll look into it. Thanks

 

Thank you. Is whole fish better for digestion because of the water or are they both the same?

You won't find anything with non dried fish in it. The moisture is gone

 

Some of the fillers used are not bad. I read a review of TetraMin and they were complimentary abut the ground brown rice and the feeding oatmeal. Both are far more nutritious than what we usually eat and easily processed by fish. The food only was rated lower than some others because of the use of preservatives and food coloring.

 

I think I remember hearing that preservatives are hard for even a human’s digestive system to process, let alone a fish’s. Is food coloring really all that bad, though?

 

Some of the fillers used are not bad. I read a review of TetraMin and they were complimentary abut the ground brown rice and the feeding oatmeal. Both are far more nutritious than what we usually eat and easily processed by fish. The food only was rated lower than some others because of the use of preservatives and food coloring.

The same site suggested that the ingredient list of Omega One is misleading since it says whole fish and whole other things. They speculated that after the moisture was extracted, the main ingredient of the food could well be the wheat that is listed further down

 

I think I remember hearing that preservatives are hard for even a human’s digestive system to process, let alone a fish’s. Is food coloring really all that bad, though?

But some of the preservatives are mandated by law to be in the food.

 

But some of the preservatives are mandated by law to be in the food.

All right. Thank you.