Hikari Bad Ingredients?

[RD.]

Most cichlid are omnivore, rarely straight herbivore or carnivore. Mbuna graze algae but also consume significant quantity of invertebrates in the wild. Piscivorous cichlid consume prey whole in the wild including vegetative matter in the gut content. So it's best for the fish health to be fed with balanced vegetative and animal matter.

Yes, I totally agree! That has been my personal mantra for many years.

 

[Hendre]

My polys eat "algae" tabs and peas destined for my synodontis, not worried at all lol

 

[RD.]

One thing I have noticed is hikari gold is a very clean food, I find nls mashes up and clouds the water much more. It also floats plenty long enough to remove any in eaten food. Good if your well stocked with cichlids that make a mess, indirectly at least in my experience the lack of clouds of fine mush means more is going in the fish and less is polluting your tank, one more thing worth considering other than just the nutritional value.

Hey Justin, not picking on you, but generally speaking, if/when fish are creating a cloud of mush, dust, or whatever, it is due to one of two things.

1. too much food being consumed at once, which in the chaos of a community feeding frenzy of fish creates a lot of chewing, and a lot of finer particles making their way back into the tank water, or
2. too large of a pellet being fed to the fish. Some folks think that feeding 6-10mm pellets to a 12 inch cichlid is optimum, when a 3-4mm would be more ideal for consumption, and overall digestibility. As you know I feed NLS, and have trialed many brands of foods over the years, and never have the issue that you have described.


And like tiger15, after reading ingredients I give all food the sniff test. Fish/krill/shrimp based food should smell like those primary ingredients, just as herbivore food should smell like seaweed/algae.

 

[tiger15]

Large fish can eat small pellet. Small fish can't eat large pellet. All my fish from 2 to 14 inch are fed with pellet no larger than 3mm. Large pellet run the risk of intestinal blockage and bloat, because saturated pellet in the gut of fish can double in size without the fish feeling it. It's healthier for the fish to expend energy to pick out many small pellet than to gobble up a few mouth full of jumble pellet.

For small grow outs, I started them with 0.5 mm NLS and then graduated into 1 mm NLS. For big fish, I feed them mini floating and mini sinking Hikari. Mini Hikari pellet are about 3 mm in size. Although I believe NLS are superior in quality, my complaint is NLS pellet are semi sinking and can make a mess falling into rock crevices. Hikari pellet float straight up or sink straight down to where I want them to drop.

Excel is top grade Hikari food with krill and spirulina in the formula that are stripped down in Gold. But I prefer sinking Gold than sinking Excel because of the color difference. I have hard time distinguishing sinking Excel from my algae coated gravel because they share similar grain size and green color. Gold is brown and stands out. I think fish can see color better than I as they don't seem to have trouble picking out camouflaged pellet in the gravel. But I am the food giver and need to know where the food fall into. So my selection of fish food is not just about the quality, but also the physical properties.

 

[RD.]

Most small fish can eat a large pellet, it's just messy, and wasteful.

In commercial fisheries, pellet size, as well as particle size of the raw ingredients prior to extrusion, are key factors in overall digestibility and growth by the fish.

 

[tiger15]

Most small fish can eat a large pellet, it's just messy, and wasteful.

No, they cannot swallow large pellet fresh. They have to wait for them to soaked and softened up, but there may not be much left in a community with big greedy eaters. But they can always feed on the debris generated by messy big eaters. I have fry born and grow out in a community that feed entirely on debris. Only in my grow out tanks do I provide baby size pellets and NLS is perfect for them.

 

[RD.]

LOL, small fish can EAT large pellets, they simply can't swallow them whole - hence the mess, and waste. Same as fry or juvenile fish picking at a large wafer. We are saying the same thing, but EAT, and SWALLOW are two very different things.

But that can happen with any fish, no matter the size, if the pellet size is too large for the fish. This isn't exactly rocket science. Hand me a triple burger fully loaded, and I'll make a mess too. Hand me a smaller slider, and I will pop that down the hatch in one or two bites. Same concept.