I think you are on the right track personally. There are concerns about the shelf-life of commercial diets, but if it were dire then nutritional disease would be more prevalent than it is. Just buy small amounts in sealed containers and use it quickly. Using pellets as a supplement is fine if you can get your fish to take them. The ingenuity you show in finding local sources of fresh feed is inspired. i stock my koi filter at home with gambusia and it provides a goodly number of feeders for most of the year while also controlling mosquitos. This would be an excellent topic to explore further. Sustainable Aquaria.
Goldfish are Nutritious
- Thread starter sjkoi
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I think you are on the right track personally. There are concerns about the shelf-life of commercial diets, but if it were dire then nutritional disease would be more prevalent than it is. Just buy small amounts in sealed containers and use it quickly. Using pellets as a supplement is fine if you can get your fish to take them. The ingenuity you show in finding local sources of fresh feed is inspired. i stock my koi filter at home with gambusia and it provides a goodly number of feeders for most of the year while also controlling mosquitos. This would be an excellent topic to explore further. Sustainable Aquaria.
I really think that you are on the wrong side of the facts.. your lion in wild vs zoo was a pathetic attempt at some kind of point. A killer whale in the wild is something to be feared, but at Sea World it's just a giant fish.. haha. They have killed several people in captivity over the last 5 years.. and I'm sure your lion analogy could be said the same for sharks as well?
I've read the discussions that RD has chimed in on, and I have even argued with him about some things, but they were just opinions... however, he's throwing valid proof of statments, links, and numbers at you, and you are still saying he's in the wrong.. you're a funny guy.
I use multiple different brands of PELLETS, and many people on here do, and their fish are stunning, healthy, and some have even lived longer than their stated life expectancy. Yet, pellets are the devil.
I think you should just stop with this topic all together. You did not start this thread to talk about how fish do better on a natural diet.. you made this thread to try to bribe people into thinking "Goldfish are nutritious." How do I know this? Because if you didn't, then your title would have been "natural diet is better than pellets".
Maybe if you picked up a book, searched on the internet a bit, and learned some up to date things, your koi farm wouldn't be on the back burner... we can all speculate, but I'm going on a hunch that we won't be seeing SJKoi as a business much longer.
You need to realize that things change, and while you may have grown up knowing this and that, chances are it's been obsolete for quite some time.
I think it's also funny that you say you stock your koi tanks with gambusia etc.. but then in previous posts you admit to buying truck loads of commercial koi food. So, pellets are bad, yet you use them. Talk about being a hypocrite much?
This was never about winning Rich, at least not for me. It was about ensuring that members of this forum got both sides of the story, and in turn they can make their own informed decision.
I'm not sure what you mean by "fad", the food that I feed my fish has been around for over 20 yrs, and is used by some of the most prestigious public aquariums in the USA. This is a company that has no sales reps, no marketing reps, and outside of the odd trade show spends zero $ on advertising. A small USA based family owned operation that by word of mouth alone has now spread to almost every country in the free world. That hardly equates to being a fad.
BTW - In those 100s of millions of years of evolution, did these same fish evolve to be kept in glass boxes, and to swim in dechlorinated tap water? Or is that somehow different?
I'm not sure what you mean by "fad", the food that I feed my fish has been around for over 20 yrs, and is used by some of the most prestigious public aquariums in the USA. This is a company that has no sales reps, no marketing reps, and outside of the odd trade show spends zero $ on advertising. A small USA based family owned operation that by word of mouth alone has now spread to almost every country in the free world. That hardly equates to being a fad.
BTW - In those 100s of millions of years of evolution, did these same fish evolve to be kept in glass boxes, and to swim in dechlorinated tap water? Or is that somehow different?
Rd, I think another good experiment would be to see how much of the water soluble Vitamins C, Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, B6, Folate and B12 leach out of a pellet of your brand of feed after soaking in water for 5, 10 and 15 minutes. I have never been able to get any of my feed salesmen to give me an answer to that question. Your label states to feed only what will be consumed immediately. I am not quoting here. I wonder why that is? This is in addition to the nutrient loss that occurs from the moment of manufacture. Yeah, you pump the vitamin levels way up in top tier feeds because you have to if you are going to get them to suitable levels at the time of consumption. Unfortunately, most pellets aren't top tier. You do get what you pay for. When you promote pellets as superior to live feed, that is a generic statement. Its just not true. Its not true with top tier diets and its especially not true with the staple diets.
It says feed immediately because just like fish waste, ANY food can foul the water. Why the heck would you let food sit in your tank for 10-15 minutes?
interesting, but fish in the wild aren't eating goldfish every day either.....
and we are not talking about fish in the wild at all really when it comes to the hobby of fish keeping. No matter how large the tank we keep our fish in, its still an artificial environment. A lot of the fish we keep don't come from the wild.....alot of tank raised species.
Most wild fish are pretty opportunistic and will eat whatever they can to get by. A lot of predators only eat a real meal once or twice a week and the rest they fill in with whatever they can find. It's a far cry from what our fish in glass boxes experience with a controlled daily diet regardless of what composes that diet.
Most of our fish, in our house, are pets. They all have names and my main concern as a fish keeper is to provide a diet that keeps our pets healthy. Same as we do our dogs. Most fish that I've kept that were the healthiest generally also looked the best and had significant growth. That was on an exclusive pellet diet......I've already run 2 different 3 month one brand exclusives and am getting ready to do a third. My fish really don't need to prey on smaller fish to be healthy........Im pretty sure my petsmart jd was born in a tank, as were his parents and their parents before them.
it's also interesting if you factor in the fact that a lot of the species we keep actually attain larger size and live longer in tanks than they do in the wild. No predators, more regulated diet........alot of things to put in to the equation but some species thrive in aquariums.
Rich, I was going to post a detailed response to your question, then stopped myself as I really don't see the point in going 'round & 'round in circles with you over tihngs that have already been covered in detail. In the end you just won't get it, and seem to be blind to the fact that modern commercial foods have been created to cover every scenario that a layperson such as yourslf can come up with. If you are hell bent on proving something, then get busy proving it already. The health & longevity of my fish are all the proof that I need.
As far as vitamin content in pellet feed, I think that a better question here would be, how many fish owned by members of this forum, and are fed pellet foods, are showing signs of Vitamin C, Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, B6, Folate and/or B12 deficiencies?
As far as vitamin content in pellet feed, I think that a better question here would be, how many fish owned by members of this forum, and are fed pellet foods, are showing signs of Vitamin C, Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, B6, Folate and/or B12 deficiencies?
This thread really makes me wish there was a "like" button for some posts. 
Even home grown ones aren't what you would call nutritious either.
BUT, the OP doesn't get that.
