Omega One vs NLS

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
RD. said:
To be honest, not a whole lot. The quality of fish meal is greatly dependant on the amino acid profile of the proteins, the overall digestibility of that protein, how fresh the raw material is, how it is processed, and how it is stored.

There are various grades of fish meal, some costing as much as 30% more than others, which at the end of the year could equate to hundreds of thousands of $$$ to a large manufacturer.

My point being, that "Fresh Fish from Alaska" found in Omega fish food, ain't exactly the same fresh fish found on your dinner plate, which is what their marketers would have you believe.
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Yea thats true, I like nls better I think of it more as a top shelf food and Omega one more as a mid grade food, but as you stated you never know which brands are using what grade of protein.
 
i use both lol. Omega One 1st flakes and NLS thera+ pellets as a stable diet for all my fishes.
 
I use NLS, Omega one , and Hikari gold. I was using only NLS for a while but I noticed the water would stain a slight red color. I dont know if it is from a dye or something natural that would leach into the water. I dont have that problem anymore now that I mix the 3 different foods. Has anyone else noticed a red tint to the water with NLS , and no I was not overfeeding lol


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The only time one should experience what you are describing, is when they are either overfeeding, allowing too much food to sit for too long in the tank, or feeding pellets that are too large in size for the fish to swallow whole. The more chewing that takes place, the more fine particulate matter one will have in the water column. Ditto to if food is allowed to sit & break down in the water for any length of time. NLS does not contain any type of ingredient that would cause water to turn red.
 
RD. said:
The only time one should experience what you are describing, is when they are either overfeeding, allowing too much food to sit for too long in the tank, or feeding pellets that are too large in size for the fish to swallow whole. The more chewing that takes place, the more fine particulate matter one will have in the water column. Ditto to if food is allowed to sit & break down in the water for any length of time. NLS does not contain any type of ingredient that would cause water to turn red.
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I would always just put enough for my fish to eat right away, some of my fish are messy eaters and I noticed more of the food was coming out of their gills than with other brands. What I did notice also is a fine red powder at the water surface for a while , it seemed to just be residue from the NLS pellets. Also when vacuming gravel the waste was a very red color maybe a source of color leaching into the water also. None of this ever hurt my fish and they seemed very healthy on NLS, Just a observation from using it. I did switch to a smaller pellet NLS to stop the food from coming back out the gills, I dont have that problem with Omega one or Hikari. My fish do love to eat NLS and usually pick those pellets out first.


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The main ingredient in NLS is Antarctic Krill, and being a natural food source it can vary slightly in color depending on the seasonal variations of the krill, but it's always going to have a reddish orange coloration. The color itself will not leach into the water column, but fine particulate matter from messy eaters, and waste accumulation, can cause the situation that you describe.
 
Yeah I think it is a very high quality food that is why I still use it some , I just found it to be a bit messy compared to other foods, I dont have anymore problems with the red tint anymore now. It was never a very red color but just enough to notice.


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I'd never noticed O1 until there were a bunch of the wafers for sale (50%) at the store, so I grabbed 3 or 4 of them. I had a p. senegal pellet trained to hikari carnivore pellets, but now he goes straight for the O1 wafers, heh. I still feed both, but it definitely got me interested in the brand. I feed my bettas, danios, tetras, and barbs nls, and plan on switching over my cichlids when my hikari runs out, they don't like the floaters. The bettas showed a great change in color coming from a cheaper brand.

I might see if I can find a small container of O1 for the cichlids and see if they like it.
 
Neil, don't hold back, i'm not asking you to be the NLS guy but would really love to see you compare these two cichlids pellets.
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While this is an old thread, I thought that HR might be interested in my recent comparison of these two products. :)

A couple of months back I purchased a group of juvenile 3-4" A. citrinellum. Quality stock, father was a stunning creamsicle from Don Conkel, female was the offspring from Jeff Rapps wild stock that he brought in a few yrs back. I ended up keeping 8 juvies, and split them up evenly between two 125 gallon tanks.

For a few months prior to getting these fish they had been on a low grade farm feed, very low grade. So while they were used to eating pellet food, it was pellets with a high starch content that crumbled up in their mouths rather easily.

When I first brought them home they flat out rejected NLS. No surprise to me as I already knew that a harder/dense food wasn't going to be an easy sell to fish that were used to a starchy food. Usually I would just give the fish some tough love, and make them convert, even if it took a couple of weeks or more - but these were young juvie fish, and pure citrinellus in these parts are rarely if ever found. So I broke down & tried some Omega One Marine pellets. http://www.omegasea.net/marine_pellets_with_garlic.html

I decided to go with the marine pellets as it has a higher level of both omega 3 & omega 6, and it contained garlic. It went over well, the fish hammered it hard, and in my mind it was light years ahead of the soybean meal/poultry feather crap that they were previously being fed. Each feeding I also added some 2mm NLS to the mix, hoping that they would eventually get used to that as part of their regular diet as well.

What I noticed straight away was the amount of waste being produced by the fish. With the Omega it came out whiteish in color, and there was always long trailing turds - and LOTS of them. The overall digestibility seemed rather poor. But still, they were eating, and it had to be better than the farm feed, and some of them were beginning to eat at least some NLS as well. After approx 30 days all of the juvies in both tanks were eating NLS as well as the Omega, some more eagerly than others. After a few more weeks I decided it was time to cut the cord, I did a large water change, cleaned the substrate thoroughly, and put them on a strict diet of NLS. Some hammered it hard from the get go, a couple ate it, but not with great gusto. After 6 days all of them are eating it as though it's their last meal. A full conversion to NLS.

My thoughts - as suspected, and as previously discussed in this and other threads, Omega does not seem to have near the digestibility as NLS. LOTS more waste, and the fishes feces remind of back in the day when I fed a lot of flake food (high in starch). Long trailing turds, and LOTS of them. When I did a water change yesterday the overall solid waste from the NLS diet seemed to be 1/4 of the waste compared to when they were eating the Omega. I mean a MASSIVE difference.

I believe that many people are being bamboozled by the Omega labels. Here's my thoughts on that;

http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/ResourcesforYou/ucm047113.htm

From that FDA link on pet food labels .........

All ingredients are required to be listed in order of predominance by weight. The weights of ingredients are determined as they are added in the formulation, including their inherent water content. This latter fact is important when evaluating relative quantity claims, especially when ingredients of different moisture contents are compared.

For example, one pet food may list "meat" as its first ingredient, and "corn" as the second ingredient. The manufacturer doesn't hesitate to point out that its competitor lists "corn" first ("meat meal" is second), suggesting the competitor's product has less animal-source protein than its own. However, meat is very high in moisture (approximately 75% water). On the other hand, water and fat are removed from meat meal, so it is only 10% moisture (what's left is mostly protein and minerals). If we could compare both products on a dry matter basis (mathematically "remove" the water from both ingredients), one could see that the second product had more animal-source protein from meat meal than the first product had from meat, even though the ingredient list suggests otherwise.
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Now factor that into the "fresh fish from Alaska" that Omega uses, which we already know (and the owner of Omega has admitted) is mostly comprised of fish plant processing waste - and what does that leave you with? 70+% water content, that appears to me to be used as a marketing gimmick to place that fish protein FAR above the wheat flour/wheat gluten combo that Omega uses in most/all of their pellets. So how does one really know what's going on? As I have mentioned many times, if one compares all of the ingredients on a dry matter basis, there could be just as much wheat in Omega (or more) as the animal protein (fish) that they list. It certainly seemed that way to me.

Clearly none of these juvie amphilophus digested Omega very efficiently, and the solid waste produced from this food was excessive when compared to NLS. I suspect that the Omega Cichlid pellets would fair even more poorly, as IMO the overall ingredients aren't as good as the marine formula. (less protein, no spirulina, no garlic)


Cheers!
 
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