Pellet fish foods have come a long way from years past.  They are now a smorgasbord of amazing nutrition that can really shore up the foundation of your aquarium diet.   While most pellets for saltwater aquariums are sinking pellets, you may find some out there that are floating (which I don’t recommend).  The reason for this is that most saltwater aquariums today have overflow boxes (a.k.a. skimmer boxes) where the surface water is skimmed and sent back to a sump.  Floating pellets would only end up getting sucked into the overflow and then go uneaten, and break down in your system, adding to pollution (increased nitrates, phosphates, and suppressed pH and alkalinity).  So, to recap, you want to go with a sinking pellet. 

One of the best pellet brands we have come to love is the New Life Spectrum pellets, in both small and large pellet sizes.  I have a friend who loves it so much, that in some aquariums it is all he feeds.  Now, I don’t agree with this, feeding only one kind of food, but the point is that he has gotten such amazing benefits from it.    We have been using this one for years and just love it.  I could hardly believe it when a colleague of mine told me that his Bartlet’s Anthias were eating New Life Spectrum pellets.  That says a lot.  I want the fish to be able to eat the pellets as soon as they are added to the aquarium, so often we will soak them for a few minutes to soften them up.

Ocean Nutrition also has some great pelleted foods, as does Hikari.  The Hikari product we have used a lot is their “S” pellet (for small).  This is great for any newly arrived captive-raised fishes (i.e. clownfishes, pseudochromis/dottybacks) who are accustomed to being fed small pellets and will at first ignore anything that doesn’t look like a small pellet (1 mm) and sinks quickly.  In other words, at first, all they are interested in eating are very small pellets. 

One big caution with feeding pellet foods, is that they are very easy to over feed.  The moment the can is opened you want to be very deliberate and move slowly so as not to spill them either.    Uneaten pellets can end up settling into your substrate/sand where they will break down and add to pollution in your aquarium (increased nitrates and phosphates, suppressed pH and alkalinity too).  Of course, this happens with any food the is overfed, not just pellets.  So, remember that less more often is better than more less often.  How’s that for a tongue twister.

We also like to offer a larger pellet for bigger fishes.  This way we have two different sizes of pellets, providing more diversity and better suited to ensuring that everyone (fishes) gets a pellet that is just right sized for them to readily eat. 

Medicated pellets are also available for when you have a sick fish, or one that needs rehabilitation.  New Life Spectrum makes a medicated pellet in case you wanted a brand to look for.

I like to think of pellet foods as an all-in-one vitamin food, because there are so many different ingredients that go into them.

Happy Fishes,

Warren Gibbons
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One of the most important foods you can provide your saltwater aquarium is frozen foods, and the fresher the better.  Believe it or not, I am shocked at how often I come across a fellow hobbyist whose saltwater fish are only fed dry flakes and pellet food. Yes there have been big advances in these diets, but again, diversity is king.  So make sure frozen foods are a part of your saltwater fish’s diet.

 

 

 

 

FROZEN

As for frozen foods, there are many different kinds. We typically use fresh frozen foods as a preference over gels.  Although I have experienced great results with gel foods too, we just prefer the fresh-frozen.  A nice thing about the gels is that they are very convenient and most of them are made up of many different kinds of fresh frozen foods. 

One important thing to note about all frozen foods is that they need to be rinsed before feeding them into your aquarium.  The reason for this is, that when you thaw out even our top favorite brand of frozen food, there is yucky off-colored syrup left behind that will pollute your water quality.  So, what we recommend is to thaw out your frozen food, and then pour it through find net, such as a brine shrimp net, and then rinse it under tap water, and voila it’s ready to feed.

The frozen foods we like to use are mysis shrimp and enriched adult brine shrimp.  And then especially for new arrivals, we also feed “cyclopeeze” to help kickstart their appetite (only for the first week).

 

 

 

 

MYSIS

As for the mysis, our favorite brand is Piscine Energetics.  Their mysis are large and you get more mysis than water in the packets (some other brands have a lot of water once thawed = lower value).  And they are extremely fresh and you get whole mysis, not bits and chunks.  Also, this is the major brand that is preferred by most of the curators at public aquariums.  You can visit their site at http://www.mysis.com.

 

 

 

 

ENRICHED ADULT BRINE SHRIMP

Adult brine shrimp is one of the most widely fed frozen foods for saltwater aquariums. It’s cheap and fish gobble it up.  And yet, by itself, it is not very nutritious.  But when you gut-load them with HUFAs (i.e. omega 3 fatty acids, etc.) or spirulina algae, they are fantastic.  The brand we currently use is San Francisco Bay Brand (http://www.sfbb.com/frozen.asp#).  I’m not sure if this is still the case, but when I originally was seeking a manufacturer who enriched their adult brine shrimp, San Francisco Bay Brand was the only one we could find, and they now have two types of enriched brine:  Omega 3 and the spirulina enriched. Both are fantastic.

 

 

 

 

GEL FOODS

While we have not focused on using gel foods as part of our feeding regimen, we have clients who do and the results they get with their fish are just as good.  One of the pros to using gel foods is that they typically come in cube form in foil packets. This makes feeding and portioning easy.  On the con side to using gel foods, it is more difficult to rinse them if they are made with a gel binder, and thus all that soup goes into your tank adding to pollution and can degrade water quality.  But overall, they are a great way to go.  Two of the brands we have experience with are Ocean Nutrition and San Francisco Bay Brand.  Of course there are many others.

 

 

 

 

Our next post will cover pellet foods and how to feed which foods in which order. Believe it or not, the sequence in which you feed these different food types does matter. 

Happy Fishes,

Warren Gibbons,

Gibbons Aquaria, Inc.

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When it comes to diet, fish are not much different than people in the sense that they also need a diverse diet in order to be vital and healthy and thus resist disease.

Today I am going to introduce you to some of the basics we use to make up a diverse diet.  And by no means is this the ONLY way, rather it is simply one way, one that has worked very well for us.  This diet is part of what helps us have very, very few fish losses.  In fact, I know we are far below the industry average, even for professional aquarium maintenance service companies.

So, I like to “chunk” things down into the big picture points first and then we can dive into the details.

Overall, there are four categories of foods we use. They are as follows:

1) flake

2) frozen

3) pellets

4) gels

 

FLAKES

Today, we’ll start with flake foods.  We like to use primarily two types of flakes for every saltwater aquarium.  They are spirulina flake food and nori (a.k.a. sea weed).

By far, the best food you can get into a fish is NORI. If you are familiar with sushi, this is the stuff they wrap the maki rolls in.  Some people also call it seaweed.  It is amazingly potent and nutritious.  If you can get a fish to eat one food, this is it (of course fish still need other foods too).  Just know that this stuff is amazing.  It has great healing characteristics, and fish that eat it have fantastically brilliant colors.  I can’t say enough good things about it.  There are many kinds out there, including different colors (green, brown, purple, red).  The brands we use are “Sea Veggies” by Two Little Fishies, and “Seaweed Selects”, by Ocean Nutrition.  Both are great.  If your budget is tight, you can also purchase it from your local health food store.  When feeding nori, we like to let it soak in aquairum water for 3-5 minutes to soften up and then we break it up into smaller bits as it is added to the aquarium.  Some people like to attach it to a “lettuce clip” and let the fish graze on it (this works too).  Notice that lettuce is not on our diet.  I don’t get why even public aquariums feed lettuce, which is a land-based food, to saltwater tropical fish when you can give them a far better choice at roughly the same cost.  I do not recommend lettuce.

As for the spirulina flake food, we like two brands, but I know that there are many others out there just as good, maybe even better.  We use Ocean Star International (OSI) brand spirulina flake.  It is nice a dark, thus well-concentrated, and has a high content of spirulina algae.  This seems to be a magic food for fish that will eat it (as is the nori – more on that in a moment).  Spirulina flake is great for tangs and angels especially, and any other fish that will eat it. It is particularly good with creating vibrant colors, a strong mucous layer, as well as giving the fish excellent healing ability for small wounds and abrasions (from aggression with other fish, etc.).

On our next post, we will cover frozen foods.  What foods are you feeding?  Do you have any favorites?  Post a reply and let us know.

 

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