Dry Foods

[itafx]

I've been a long time user of Tetramin flakes. Recently I tried their Tropical Crisps. I hoped there would be less tiny crumbs that don't get eaten tending to foul the water. But only the very biggest fish could eat the crisps and I had to break them up. Then there were too many crumbs from that. I have also found that the fish don't like pellets because they are too hard for the fish's mouth.

It seems as though there ought to be a kind of dry food that they like, and that is an edible size, but that doesn't foul the tank. I saw advertised some kind of encapsulated pellet that sounded like a possibility, but it may have been only for one size of fish.

Has anyone found a really great dry food?

 

[Leader of Men]

I share your same thoughts on pellets. Sometimes bigger fish like them and so I used to drop pellets and flakes in so all of my fish could eat without feeling threatened, but that isn't the case with my current set of friends.

I wish I could help you better with your problem but the only advice I can over is to stick with the tetra branded flakes as those seem to keep my fish with the most color and likely the healthiest (if they are that full of color they would be very healthy, no?) and then what I typically do is go in with a net right after I drop them in to try and catch them before hitting the bottom. Do you have a bottom feeder?

Like I said I wish I could answer your problem with a particular flake food that works best, but from my experience it's what you do after the flakes hit the tank rather than what flakes you're actually dropping in.

 

[JustOneMore20]

New Life Spectrum is small granules/pellets. I haven't tried the community formula, but the cichlid formula is small, so I'm guessing the community would be too. If you have really small fish, NLS Grow is tiny. I use it for my Celestial Pearl Danios.

Otherwise, I break my flakes up for the fish and pretty much all of it gets eaten, so it doesn't foul the tank.

 

[itafx]

Here's what I'm doing right now:

1. Feed in multiple small increments. I have 9 tanks in one room so I just keep going around and around. By the time I get done with the last tank, the first one is ready for more. This is a pain and a joy. It's nice feeding them and seeing them come to your hand to eat, but it takes about 1/2 h per feeding 2x per day, and that's too time consuming for me.
2. For general show tanks, don't feed them so much. I push lots of food into juveniles because I want them to grow up fast. Right now I'm working on a batch of 25 Giant Danio fry. They are about 5 months old and are about 1/2 the size of adults. I've also had, for about 2 months, 7 angel juvies that I want to breed and I've gotten them to double in size through this feeding regimen.
3. Lots of species are messy and drop a lot of crumbs, including angels, and danios. A little food ends up hitting the floor no matter what. A lot of times, Giant Danios flick the surface then they grab a flake like a miniature version of a big bass taking a fly and it shatters a lot of the flakes and makes them come down faster than the community can gobble them up. To make matters worse, when a big fish eats a flake or a crisp, often some gets broken into tiny bits too small for him to eat. Also, if they don't like that particular flake, they will take it in, pulverize it, and squirt it out their gills as a suspension of tiny particles. I do two things: (1) Use bottom feeders like cory cats, but some tanks don't have them yet; (2) Use mid feeders who like small crumbs as a clean up crew. I've found neons, cherry barbs, and Glowlight Tetras are good for this. Still, I fear that I'm loosing some food to the water column which isn't so good for algae.

So I'm still looking for better solutions. i like the branded coated pellet idea tht JustOneMore20 had. Maybe I'll research into it further. I jad some Cory pellets so I just tried them on my angels to see what they would do. I crushed them plenty small enough to be easily eaten and put them on the surface. The angels gobbled them up and then spit them back out as smaller pieces and were totally disinterested in following them up. As soon as I put some crushed up tetramin crisps in they started eating them. So much for the pellets.

Intuitively, I think live food would be the best and cleanest, but I don't have a way to make a continuous supply of a known good live food.

P.S.
I just looked up New Life Spectrum. They have everything from flakes, to granules to pellets. Here is an example of text on their pellets: "Pellets are designed with no dust and will stay in the water for hours without disintegrating, reducing pollution. " That sounds pretty good if it's true and the fish will eat it.
itafx

 

[Algenco]

I feed NLS pellets in .35mm and 1mm size also the NLS flake.
It may take a few days for your fish to accept pellets, but I haven't had any that didn't. Pellets are a lot cleaner and easier for me, I throw in measured amounts and everyone gets their share

 

[JeffreyL]

Another endorsement for New Life Spectrum. The Small Fish Formula Pellets are small enough for most fish, but just a bit too big for our CelestialGalaxPearlRabdanios.

The Community Formula Pellets are bigger and perfect for livebearers, killies, etc. Although all these fish will take the smaller pellets, too.

And the Fresh H2O Flakes work well for all smaller fish.

Like so many here, it is my staple food. A good blend and includes excellent color enhancers.

HTH

 

[itafx]

I just ordered some NLS Cichlid food and some growth food formula pellets to try out. I found out some internet FSs don't have it under NLS, but under spectrum instead.