Hikari Food - Vitamin Comparison

[Burtess]

ok first thing your avatar scares me...... when me and my buddy compared nls nutrional value to that of hikari nls was not as good and alot more money.... hikari had more of almost everything....

Thats the thing, is more necessarily better? Getting "more" from lesser sources can't be good.

For instance, two dog foods can have a similar assay of nutrients (protein, fats, vitamins, minerals, ash, etc.) but one is made from real meat sources, while the other is largely from grains. Protein from grains is surely inferior to protein from meat....

NLS (and Omega One) are surely manufactured from much better ingredients than Hikari....

I posted the following in another thread: http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119654

For any food that I consider, I look at the first few ingredients. What are they?

Check out the first 5 ingredients in these:

Good food:

Omega One Cichlid Pellets - whole salmon, whole herring, whole shrimp, wheat flour, wheat glutten...

Omega One Super Veggie Kelp Pellets - whole kelp, spirulina, whole salmon, halibut, seafood mix (including krill, whole herring, & shrimp)....

NLS Thera+ - krill, herring, wheat flour, algae meal, garlic....

OK food:

Hikari Cichlid Gold - fish meal, flaked corn, wheat flour, gluten meal, brewer's dried yeast...

Hikari Bio-Gold+ - fish meal, wheat flour, brewer's dried yeast, gluten meal, spirulina...

Crap:

Tetra Cichlid Sticks - Fish meal, torula dried yeast, wheat germ meal, dried potato products, wheat gluten... what fish eats potatoes????

You have to look at the ingredients, if the first thing listed is wheat or corn products, do your fish a favour and toss it in the trash....

These are the pelleted foods that I feed to my cichlids, I don't ever go near the Nutrafin, Tetra, etc. as it is generally overpriced garbage.

Burt

 

[Bobears]

My question would be are fish like us and can only accept a certain amount of the vitamins ie. the water solubles? Humans can't process and intake 20K cu of vitamin B, you pee all the excess away. So how much is enough? Always go for quality, but it seems there may be a limit. Right?

 

[neekaragua]

I prefer quality fresh ingredients from the grocery store
I can make a months worth of food for about 10 dollars give or take and it contains whole fish like smelt herring talipia shrimp mussels as well as fresh peas and spinnich
blend it up and add organic beef gelitin(im sure any would work natural is equal cost here) to keep it together and all my fish love it

 

[beblondie]

maybe some of you missed the bottom part
free in water the following happens After 30 seconds this applies to
water soluble vitamins only
Vitamin b6 loss 15%
Folic Acid loss 20%
Choline loss 30%
Panothenic acid loss 50%
Vitamin C loss 70%
Vitamin B12 loss 90%
They use huge amounts of water soluable vitamins simply because they of thre
amount lost so rapidly in water.

 

[Miles]

Thats the thing, is more necessarily better? Getting "more" from lesser sources can't be good.

For instance, two dog foods can have a similar assay of nutrients (protein, fats, vitamins, minerals, ash, etc.) but one is made from real meat sources, while the other is largely from grains. Protein from grains is surely inferior to protein from meat....

If you do a bit of research on dog food, alot of the 'primary' ingredient listings can be mis-leading. Working for a pet store, I took the time to educate myself.. and to my surprise, I found out that alot of "Premium" brands of dog foods intentionally mis-calculate the weight of their primary ingredients in order to fool the customer into thinking they are not using fillers, such as grains.

Call up Omega One.. ask them if they list their primary ingredients based on their "wet" weight or "dry" weight. The 'whole' krill, salmon, halibut they boast about on their packaging.. I can almost guarantee they calculate those ingredients with their "wet" weight, while Hikari processes their food first and determines the value by their "dry" weight, and compensates by adding vitamins.

If you see a dog food that has a primary ingredient listed as a meat based product, more than likely that company weighed that meat based product while it was WET, skewing the results and allowing them to list the meat based product as the base ingredient. Alot of 'premium' dog foods do this, don't be fooled.. Infact, you can't even purchased a "3 star plus" dog food at any corporate pet store.. and thats on a scale of 1 to 5.

Whole and pure products are great to use, especially as primary ingredients.. but is the nutrition varied enough to sustain a well-balanced diet? It depends on the fish I would say ~ Which fish need more calories, etc? Whole seafoods provide alot of calories and protein, but not much nutritional content - so Omega one loses out by not displaying added vitamins, if they do much of that at all?

and Anne put it best.. the reason for overdoing the vitamins is because of their water soluble properties, and the fishes inability to process or ingest these in high doses makes it near impossible for 'overdose'.. It is also likely, just like humans, excessive vitamins will be bypassed through their system..



Good Thread.. Food for thought

 

[WyldFya]

Omega One makes very good food and I do use it quite heavily on my discus, however, the Hikari cichlid gold sinking, and floating are both very good foods, which are used on most of my other fish. NLS IMO/IME is not the food it is hyped up to be. It is a decent food, but the end result is that the fish need other foods to supplement, as they are not as vibrant, nor do they grow as fast as they do on many other foods (even tetra pro).

Miles, was your initial post about Carnivore sinking, or massivore? I noticed that the one you listed and the one John listed have the same break down, and I know they are very similar, but haven't looked to see if they are identical.

 

[keepinfish]

WOW THIS IS VERY INTERESTING!

 

[johnptc]

Omega One makes very good food and I do use it quite heavily on my discus, however, the Hikari cichlid gold sinking, and floating are both very good foods, which are used on most of my other fish. NLS IMO/IME is not the food it is hyped up to be. It is a decent food, but the end result is that the fish need other foods to supplement, as they are not as vibrant, nor do they grow as fast as they do on many other foods (even tetra pro).

Miles, was your initial post about Carnivore sinking, or massivore? I noticed that the one you listed and the one John listed have the same break down, and I know they are very similar, but haven't looked to see if they are identical.

i believe the difference is the size of the pellet

 

[itzacraze]

hikari has a lot of ash .... ive totally stopped feeding hikari... new life has shown me a noticable color difference .... as with humans fish can only absorb so much of the vitamin nutrient they take in the rest in passed.... if the bag said a million percent protein they would process only a small amount.... new life imo is the best protein pellet on the market ..... im currently trying the new life flake food... ive always fed spiru/algea flake.... wich in fact has more vitamins then hikari and also helps digestive regulation so if everyone is looking for maxed out nutrition everyone needs to get the spirulina flake

 

[scubasteve06]

I like Hikari Gold, Sinking Carnivore, Massivore, Tropical wafers, Algae wafers, I feed all this 2x a day, along with other meaty foods. I've seen a noticeable bulk up in the 3 weeks I've been feeding the massivore and the sinking carnivore. Just ime.