Suggestions on dry food that's not full of cheap garbage?

[aquaticeye]

Fwiw my fish love NLS brand. The only food they go for quicker is "Ken's meat wafers" which I bought during a time where we were pinching pennies. Not sure what Ken puts in those meat wafers but nearly everything in my tank goes into freak-out mode when they hit the water.

The meat wafers do indeed trigger a frenzy

 

[dogofwar]

Good topic! I tend to mix NLS, Northfin, samples of whatever random food I get with dried soldier fly larvae (available for chickens). I also feed a lot of live worms (red wigglers that I culture and earthworms from my driveway when it rains).

 

[jjohnwm]

As long as you don't live in an area that is sprayed for mosquitoes, and don't use any toxic chemicals yourself, then the dead mosquitoes harvested from a mosquito trap can be a terrific addition to the diet of many fish. I've also mounted small electronic bug zappers above outside stocktanks and let them act as auto feeders.

 

[thiswasgone]

NLS can be unpalatable food for many fish due to how dense it is IME especially if you introduce the pellets after feeding them much softer foods.

 

[Joshuakahan]

As I've kept fish over the past 35 years I've become way more picky over what I feed my fish. I'm lucky enough to live near the coast so I harvest mullet, shrimp, shellfish etc for nearly free but it's quite a lot of work.

I've also found that my fish are healthier if I avoid the more common brands of fish food. Especially my catfish, characins, and cichlids. Most livebearer and cyprinids seem to eat nearly anything without issue.

I get really frustrated when I see stuff like wheat, dehulled wheat germ, soybean anything, corn starch, "vegetable oil" (in quotes, because its literally never a vegetable based oil). None of that horseshit is something fish eat in the wild and I'm convinced most of it is cheapass filler.


I've used New Life Spectrum quite a lot as well as "whole" freeze dried foods, and seemingly as long as I use mostly those, I tend to have healthier fish. My catfish don't ever seem to bloat, my cichlids spawn more regularly, etc.

Are there any other brands out there I should consider? I seem to remember seeing others that had better ingredients but they seem to be harder to find.

I’ve been using Ron’s African cichlid food for all of my fish for a couple years and they all seem to be doing extremely well on it