I spent the day with one of the fish vets at my school, and she had some wise words about fish food, particularly pellets.
It goes bad QUICKLY!
I had no idea how quickly. For pellets, she indicated a shelf life of 2 months at room temperature, 4-6 months in the refridgerator, and much longer if you freeze any unneeded food. I told her that some of my pellets are almost a year old (at room temperature) and she said to get rid of them ASAP.
Even worse, she did diagnostics on my convict cichlid today, who has indeed ruptured his gas bladder when he jumped out of his tank almost three weeks ago. But, besides that, his tail and gill biopsies showed evidence of nutritional deficiency. It was then that I told her the only pellets he accepts are the oldest ones I have.
I just thought I'd share this info. I'm getting all new supplies of pellets and freezing all but what I can feed in a few weeks.
It goes bad QUICKLY!
I had no idea how quickly. For pellets, she indicated a shelf life of 2 months at room temperature, 4-6 months in the refridgerator, and much longer if you freeze any unneeded food. I told her that some of my pellets are almost a year old (at room temperature) and she said to get rid of them ASAP.
Even worse, she did diagnostics on my convict cichlid today, who has indeed ruptured his gas bladder when he jumped out of his tank almost three weeks ago. But, besides that, his tail and gill biopsies showed evidence of nutritional deficiency. It was then that I told her the only pellets he accepts are the oldest ones I have.
I just thought I'd share this info. I'm getting all new supplies of pellets and freezing all but what I can feed in a few weeks.
