Wow!!! I do bring out some interesting conversations on this site.
As someone who has spent a good part of his life in the pet business and dealing with and having just about every animal group commonly kept as pets, I've experienced this situation with changing foods many times. The advice I gave before was given to me by my Vet as a means to gently switch the food without causing intestinal distress within the animal. In fish, I believe taste and texture has a lot to do with the rejections. Once again, adding new food in with the old food and gradually reducing the old food has worked more often then not. I'm not a big proponent of the starving method to get a pet to switch foods when alternate, less drastic measures achieve the same results.
As for some of the other comments regarding the medicines and foods we people eat or use, I believe most people who eat a "proper" diet and really take care of themselves don't use or need supplements or medicines. While these are truly rare instances, I'm sure they do exist somewhere in the world.
Considering that many medicines are plant based in origin, one would think that people living in or around rain forests (the source of many medicines) are a bit healthier than someone who is in a city under constant stress.
As for herring or krill not being found in freshwater rivers or lakes, fish protein and crustacean life like shrimps and crabs ARE found in these waters so substituting them for "natural" foods is not that far off. (We did have herring in freshwater rivers in NJ during spawning season however.)
As for the allicin being why they use garlic in the food, I would think that the companies would list THAT in the ingredients instead of Garlic to avoid conversations such as this one. Do they think we're not smart enough to read a label?
As for adding vitamins and minerals, these things do get altered or damaged during the dehydrating & freezing processes so adding them after the process once again, is not that far off or unusual.
So let's talk about using vegetables in the aquarium. If we fed the fish a more natural diet, would they even be necessary? They do carry some of the ingredients/chemical makeup that algaes do so why not grow the algae instead? (Because Veggies are easier
)
Bottom line to all this is this: Most of the fish we keep in an aquarium today are the byproduct of fish we kept back in the stone ages
when we didn't have all the "extras" that we have today. We also today have medicine resistant diseases and genetic problems like never before. Over crowding fish tanks seem to be the norm and harsher measures to force the fish to eat unnaturally also seem to be the common answer to: HOW do I get my fish to eat something they are not used to? The fish we buy are now being kept in systems that hold multiple types of fish that shouldn't be kept together so no wonder there needs to be so many extras.
All I was thinking was that we had it so much easier "back in the day" and the fish were better fish as well and we kept them for long periods of time without all the "extras" in their food. Why has it gotten so out of whack?
Thanks for the conversation