# Is this a good staple food(I think that's what it's called)?



## platies pwn (Nov 29, 2010)

I have aqueon cichlid flakes,and am wondering if this is a good food for cichlids.I heard that aqueon fish food isn't very healthy for fish.Is this true?


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## Schwartzy61 (Jan 25, 2010)

Aqueon is not the best in the marketplace. I usually use New Life Spectrum for my fish. It is a bit on the expensive side though. Also, when it comes to flakes vs pellets, go with pellets with cichlids, more dense of a staple food = more nutrition. 

Heres a link:http://www.aquacave.com/spectrum-cichlid-formula-1mmbr-by-new-life-international-468.html


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Aqueon food is a fairly recent product. They did a lot of formulating and testing. 

I had samples of several varieties of flake and algae wafer. The fish ate it all well and I didn't see any red flags like water clouding, bloat, or dyed water. But I didn't do any comparison testing either. But they do have a large room full of tanks in Wisconsin for testing aqueon products on actual fish. We toured them 2 years ago at ACA. It is common for rival food makers to claim their food is more healthy. Can you be more specific? Have you seen any primary sources? It is certainly possible for a new food to have something wrong with its formulation when it comes out. But I haven't read of any recalls, so it can't be too fatally bad. 

Looking at the web site, I do notice a few things. They claim all natural ingredients. The absence of a chemical preservative may mean a shorter shelf life and less nutritious old food. The other thing is the balance.

With any food, you want to look at the "guaranteed analysis" where they disclose the % of protein, fat, fiber, etc. High protein food means fish don't need to eat as much. Protein the expensive ingredient and cheap food often have low levels. So you'd think a high protein would always be good. However, some fish natural eat lots of low-protein, high-fiber food, such as plants and algae. You don't feed a cow chicken, you feed it grass. High-protein food to the wrong fish can cause issues like bloat. Both the aqueous algae wafers and spirulina-enhanced flake are surprisingly high in protein. That could conceivable be "unhealthy" for a fish that should have more fiber and less protein. Flakes can lead to air in the stomachs of fish that should eat sinking food, etc. 

Ignore the hype and the pictures on labels. Read ingredients lists and the guaranteed analysis of food you are considering. Research your fish's need. Most fish in the hobby are pretty forgiving with regards to diet. Those the have specific dietary needs are usually well known (for example, Tropheus). People who are raising large numbers of fish or have fish new to hobby need to be more selective. 

I wouldn't hesitate use Aqueon food, but it wouldn't be my first choice or my only food. See if you can pin down what you've heard. Now I'm curious.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

I had some New Life spectrum samples and it got fed to one tank upstairs as the only food for a long time. On in, some P. Acei grew very large and the yellow tails turned orange. It must have a lot of red in the food.

I am getting a bit mad at food marketers. Everyone is making "cichlid food" now. But cichlids are a huge family. Bug-eaters, snail-eaters, fish-eaters, plant-eaters, algae-eaters, even specialized fin, scale, and egg eaters. There is no way they can all thrive on the same food. "Cichlid" is no way to sort ingredients. All natural bug eating fish should have a similar food, whether they are cichlids, tetras, barbs, livebearers or anabantoids. The Aqueon small cichlid pellet package has a picture of a P. demasoni on it. The food has 42% protein, but the fish is a vegetarian.

It is up to the fish keeper to learn what your fish needs and whether a specific food will meet its needs.


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## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

so tell me EMC...why haven't you tried Plecocaine yet ?

excellent post E......almost all commercially made fish foods are researched and formulated by aquatic nutritional biologists.....not some guy cooking up a bunch of stuff in his kitchen at home...there are so many different needs that you really do need to do a good amount of research on the needs of the fish you keep...
ALL FISH NEED A GOOD VARIED BALANCED DIET OF HIGH QUALITY FOODS !!!!!!!


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

lol, most likely no handy free samples. 

I feed all the small sample stuff I get. I refuse to grind up dogfood sized koi pellets, I just trade them at meetings. 

2 years ago, it was a lot of aqueon flake. Nice and crispy, easy to powder with your fingers, tends to stay together on the tank floor if uneaten and didn't go to mush before you could siphon it out. Less happy with "Cichlid sticks" that float and can stick in a tank's upper corners if the fish don't find them.

Last year, zoo med flakes. They are kind of fragile and pulverize even when you wish they wouldn't. but they are thin, so its harder to overfeed. As in the Aqueon, the balance was the same for "different" products. Both earthworm flake and spirulina 20 have 45% protein, 3% fiber. Is there some study somewhere that this is the optimal fish food ratio? Also tried the zoomed banquet feeding block. Its the first "vacation" feeder I have liked. They actually tell you how many fish it will feed and how long. I'm sure it didn't last the whole time, though. My limia immediately started attacking the block and yanking out pieces of food.

I feed a lot of the Xtreme sinking cichlid pellet because every fish likes it and it is small enough for fry and I can get it at club meetings. 

Last year, I ordered a bunch of different foods from Ken's fish including the "golden pearls" and freeze-dried daphnia both of which I put in a spice bottle shaker to feed. I still have a lot of powders left since a little goes a long way with teeny fish and I ordered several sizes to try. Some of these are better than others, and they are great to have on hand, but they don't beat live. I still have best luck with micro worms. But on the day there are none coming up, its great to have powdered and frozen food.

The next thing I'll need will be a sinking food for plecos and something with more green in it. I usually use a 'spirulina' or 'veggie' flake, but a small pellet would work also. I only have a few plecos. A couple of bristle noses and 2 5" hypancistrus.

I once threw away was some Wardley's that dyed the water blue. There is an element of 'you get what you pay for". Never buy the cheapest food or one that has obviously been on the shelf for a year. Food loses vitamins over time. There was a Chinese dollar store food that actually killed fish with the melamine put in it to fool the protein test. You can find an account in an old thread.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

If you only have a few fish to feed, the best thing to do is ask the breeder what the parents ate. Breeding and raising healthy fry is a good indication that the feeding wasn't too far off. All of the major "name" brands will be reasonably nutritious. The have labs and do testing and fish do well on their foods exclusively, or they don't sell them. But, like the dog and cat foods, they are formulated both for "best" and for "lowest possible cost". Since these are mutually exclusive goals, there are some compromises made. 

If you say,"I want the best, whatever it costs", you either make your own, or start looking at "Premium" foods. But are you getting better food or just better marketing? 
You are back to reading ingredients list and hopefully knowing what your fish need. Xtreme was developed and systematically tested at a FA fish farm and is fed by my favorite local breeder. Lohachata feeds his own fish plecocaine, and they are very nice fish. That and the ingredients would be enough of recommendation for me. Open a fish magazine and you will see testimonials for various foods from breeders of various fish. If you don't know what your specific fish need, there are people that do, ask.

I know one guy with really big fish. He looked at ingredients and analysis and saw that one really expensive premium dog food was nearly the same as his expensive premium fish food and much cheaper. Since the fish had dog pellet sized mouths, it worked fine. It seems there is a large mark-up on putting food in little jars with fish pictures on them. Buying food online that comes in a ziploc can save money and may be fresher. But if you have 1 tank, I doubt its worth it. I'll order 5 or 10 pounds at a time and put it in the freezer to use over 6 months and I'll be feeding other foods too.

I like the Xtreme for the SA and CA cichlids and even the "haps". I think I want something greener for the mbuna. I've been told both my P. Acei and demasoni are "too big" and in these fish bigger also means more aggressive, I could do with fewer chewed-tailed fish in hospital tanks. When people at ACA say that's the biggest Acei they've ever seen and he was grown, not in a pond, but in a 55, I have to wonder if the food is too "pro-growth".


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## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

EMC...PM me your address and i will send you a couple of samples....i should have sent you some a couple of years ago...


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