what are good food brands?
- Thread starter sc2dave
- Start date
I know that this has been said, but NLS is king.
Read the ingredients, feel good about feeding it to your fish, watch them love to eat it, grow faster, be healthier, and have brighter colors.
NLS is in a league of its own.
Read the ingredients, feel good about feeding it to your fish, watch them love to eat it, grow faster, be healthier, and have brighter colors.
NLS is in a league of its own.
I switched all of my fish over to NLS except for the algae wafers. The only thing I will say about NLS is that it may have to much color enhancing characteristics. I'm getting some darker spots of color on my creamsicle MiDevils.
I mostly use Omega One at the moment.
Still got some Hikari algae wafers and cichlid staple that I'm trying to burn through. I won't be buying Hikari after the current bags are gone though. See this thread for reference: http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=309774
Any company that thinks fish need MSG, and puts in 'Starch' and 'Dried Bakery product' without having the integrity to say what exactly the starch and bakery product is made from doesn't really deserve my business IMO. Will probably try out NLS to replace the Hikari once it's gone.
"But my fish love Hikari!" - Yeah, they love MSG, and if you need to add MSG to make it palatable for fish, there's something wrong. Some dogs love to eat their own crap too, doesn't mean they should be doing it. My cichlids don't even really like the cichlid staple. It just floats on the surface and they mostly ignore it. I end up netting out half of what goes in, and most of the rest probably gets sucked through my filter after it softens up a bit.
Still got some Hikari algae wafers and cichlid staple that I'm trying to burn through. I won't be buying Hikari after the current bags are gone though. See this thread for reference: http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=309774
Any company that thinks fish need MSG, and puts in 'Starch' and 'Dried Bakery product' without having the integrity to say what exactly the starch and bakery product is made from doesn't really deserve my business IMO. Will probably try out NLS to replace the Hikari once it's gone.
"But my fish love Hikari!" - Yeah, they love MSG, and if you need to add MSG to make it palatable for fish, there's something wrong. Some dogs love to eat their own crap too, doesn't mean they should be doing it. My cichlids don't even really like the cichlid staple. It just floats on the surface and they mostly ignore it. I end up netting out half of what goes in, and most of the rest probably gets sucked through my filter after it softens up a bit.
Yes, well that past discussion certainly ended as a train wreck. lol
While checking the main ingredients in a food is indeed a good place to start, it's not exactly the be all to end all either. While manufacturers are legally obligated to list ingredients in the order of decreasing percentage, these percentages can be manipulated quite easily.
The only way to really no what's going on is by knowing the exact percentage of each ingredient. (dry weight, sans the moisture content) For years many dog food manufacturers used the dry/wet method to manipulate their labels, such as listing "fresh whole chicken" as the main ingredient, when in fact once the 80+% moisture content was removed from that chicken, that ingredient quickly dropped down to the 3rd or 4th ingredient in the product.
Another example, brand X uses 650 pounds of high quality marine protein as their "main" ingredients in a 1 ton batch of food, but does so only using krill, and herring. (followed by the binding agent)
Brand Z only utilizes 450 pounds of marine protein in a 1 ton batch of food, but uses 5 or 6 different kinds of "fish", or fish products, and lists each one of them separately, followed by a much larger (compared to brand X) inclusion rate of their binding agent/s.
According to the list above brand z's label would actually come out looking as the better product to most consumers - but is it?
Listing a greater # of fish species on the label, doesn't equate to the formula having a greater total dry weight of fish in the food. It could in fact amount to nothing more than slick marketing, and most consumers would get suckered in.
A classic method of manipulating ingredient lists is what's referred to as ingredient splitting.
As an example ....
Krill Meal, Fish Meal, Herring Meal, Shrimp Meal, Wheat Middlings, Wheat, Rice Meal, Wheat Flour, Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles, Brewers Dried Yeast, Spirulina, Paprika, Limestone, Xanthophyll, Fish Oil, Lecithin, Salt, various vitamins & minerals.
If you add up all of the starch based ingredients in that formula, you might be surprised how much total starch (wheat, rice, and DDGS) is actually in that formula. Just with the "wheat" alone, add the 3 wheat products listed, and wheat could potentially become the second ingredient listed by dry weight.
Then one needs to factor in where those raw ingredients are being sourced from. Is the protein source coming from the cold clean waters of Canada & the South Antarctic, or are they coming from some semi-intensive pond set up located on the outskirts of Bangkok, and later preserved with BHA, BHT, and ethoxyquin in order to remain stable over the long haul?
http://www.importgenius.com/shipments/ocean-nutrition-asia-co.html
And this is without even beginning to compare micronutrient levels, such as vitamins & trace minerals. Would you prefer that your fish are receiving 60 mg/kg of Vitamin C, or 600? The answer to that should be a no brainer, especially for those of you that have set ups where stress from breeding, aggression, etc is the norm.
Sometimes what's not listed on a label, can be just as important as what is.
Quite frankly unless one is privy to exact inclusion rates or percentages being used, as well as the source of those raw ingredients, ingredient listings found on fish food labels are a good general guideline, and nothing more.
While checking the main ingredients in a food is indeed a good place to start, it's not exactly the be all to end all either. While manufacturers are legally obligated to list ingredients in the order of decreasing percentage, these percentages can be manipulated quite easily.
The only way to really no what's going on is by knowing the exact percentage of each ingredient. (dry weight, sans the moisture content) For years many dog food manufacturers used the dry/wet method to manipulate their labels, such as listing "fresh whole chicken" as the main ingredient, when in fact once the 80+% moisture content was removed from that chicken, that ingredient quickly dropped down to the 3rd or 4th ingredient in the product.
Another example, brand X uses 650 pounds of high quality marine protein as their "main" ingredients in a 1 ton batch of food, but does so only using krill, and herring. (followed by the binding agent)
Brand Z only utilizes 450 pounds of marine protein in a 1 ton batch of food, but uses 5 or 6 different kinds of "fish", or fish products, and lists each one of them separately, followed by a much larger (compared to brand X) inclusion rate of their binding agent/s.
According to the list above brand z's label would actually come out looking as the better product to most consumers - but is it?
Listing a greater # of fish species on the label, doesn't equate to the formula having a greater total dry weight of fish in the food. It could in fact amount to nothing more than slick marketing, and most consumers would get suckered in.
A classic method of manipulating ingredient lists is what's referred to as ingredient splitting.
As an example ....
Krill Meal, Fish Meal, Herring Meal, Shrimp Meal, Wheat Middlings, Wheat, Rice Meal, Wheat Flour, Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles, Brewers Dried Yeast, Spirulina, Paprika, Limestone, Xanthophyll, Fish Oil, Lecithin, Salt, various vitamins & minerals.
If you add up all of the starch based ingredients in that formula, you might be surprised how much total starch (wheat, rice, and DDGS) is actually in that formula. Just with the "wheat" alone, add the 3 wheat products listed, and wheat could potentially become the second ingredient listed by dry weight.
Then one needs to factor in where those raw ingredients are being sourced from. Is the protein source coming from the cold clean waters of Canada & the South Antarctic, or are they coming from some semi-intensive pond set up located on the outskirts of Bangkok, and later preserved with BHA, BHT, and ethoxyquin in order to remain stable over the long haul?
http://www.importgenius.com/shipments/ocean-nutrition-asia-co.html
And this is without even beginning to compare micronutrient levels, such as vitamins & trace minerals. Would you prefer that your fish are receiving 60 mg/kg of Vitamin C, or 600? The answer to that should be a no brainer, especially for those of you that have set ups where stress from breeding, aggression, etc is the norm.
Sometimes what's not listed on a label, can be just as important as what is.
Quite frankly unless one is privy to exact inclusion rates or percentages being used, as well as the source of those raw ingredients, ingredient listings found on fish food labels are a good general guideline, and nothing more.
RD.;4622699; said:
Yeah, they still never answered the question though. Or any of the sub-questions asked toward the end.
If they won't answer a simple question, one that the consumer (in my mind) has a right to know, can they really be trusted? Evading a simple question like that makes me wonder what they're hiding.Well said on the rest.
I love how you rarely see NLS advertise in any formal way, but everyone still loves it. Much prefer a company to spend money on ingredients than advertising.
None of my fish will eat nls,so what good is ingredients if they dont eat it. I see plenty of folks on here that say their fish will not eat it . So the bottom line for me is i have to feed what they will eat and as much variety i can get them to eat. There is no single food that has every thing a fish need(variety is the key to healthy vibrant fish)I will challenge anyone who has feed there fish just nls or any other brand for that matter with no variety to post non photo shopped pics and i garantee that the fish that eat a variety(no matter what brands)will out shine the fish that are just raised on one brand of pellets. There is no way one single brand of any thing can have every thing your fish need.
