Feeding Freeze Dried Food

[atmmachine816]

ok i will try a poll again is it possible to get fish to eat freeze dried food when they have been eating flake food all their life

comments are welcomed

 

[whip]

Most fish that are eating flake food are conditioned to eat prepared food. I've never had a problem. The fish that only eat live food are the hard ones to convert.

 

[moeldner]

Som eo fmy fish come from paces that only feedlive food. I only feed flake, and frozen bloodoworms and brnime shrimp. They had no problem changing their diet to what I can easily provide.

 

[timmystood]

Yes it's possible - mine eat it...

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

They should have no problems eating freezedried foods, how much you feed them of it and how often though depends on what it is you are feeding them

 

[Bloo]

It might take some time to accept the new food. But freeze dried foods are not as nutritious (as a varied flake / pellet / wafer) diet and should not be fed as the only food Frozen foods are generally better than freeze dried as well.

 

[Cheese Specialist]

Your question is a biot closed to be honest. It is possible but not necessarily a good idea and it will be more difficult with some species than others.

frozen is a much better, and more accepted, food.

 

[Inchworm]

Hi atmmachine

Freeze dried foods are highly nutritious and quite inexpensive for the amount of protein supplied. I feed my fish a lot of freeze dried tubifex worms, especially in the summer when it's hard to get good live blackworms.

Like any live or frozen food, it should not be the only item on the menu. A high quality flake food will provide additional vitamins they need for good health. Depending on the kind of fish you have, you might also want to give them some algae wafers or other foods too.

If your fish don't recognize them as food right away, stop the flake for a while and let them get a little hungry. They will soon learn that freeze dried foods are rather tasty.

 

[love cichlids]

I feed freeze dried bloodworms only to my bettas. But other than that it is frozen foods for the rest of the fish, more convenient. They should have tiny frozen cubes you can buy for bettas, a hassle to try to shave off a little for them every morning

 

[guppymonkey]

Freeze dried or frozen food is pretty much a necessary part of a good diet for fish. There is absolutely no way that a flake or pellet food can fulfill the dietary needs of any fish. In processing there is a lot of essentials that are lost. Also after being openned prepared food starts to degrade almost immediately. Thats why they say to replace dry food after about six months, after that it is basically stale and nutritionally deficient. The vitamins degrade rather quickly and it shouldn't be much of a surprise (who would want to eat food thats been sitting on a shelf openned for six months?).

Another factor in favor of freeze dried food is pigment. Live food (which is basically what freeze dried is) has natural pigments that will enhance the color of fish. Blood worms help enhance the red color. Any live food will help fish keep bright colors. Some flake foods try to imitate this effect by using hormones. This used to be a lot more common than it is now. They pump fish full of hormones that make the fish display their breeding colors. This is quite common still in pet store fish, they come from the breeder with extremely bright colors from hormones added to either their food or injected straight into them (much more common in large fish like discus than small ones like Rosy Barbs or Dwarf Gouramis). This has a few detrimental effects though, first its makes the males much more aggressive towards each other, secondly it has a side effect of damaging organs. Its almost like being on an adrenaline rush for a month straight, it can't be good for the body.

Frozen food is better than freeze dried for the same reason that freeze dried is better than prepared (not that live food should be the only food prepared foods have essentials that freeze dried just can't provide). During the freeze drying process some vitamins and protein are lost (some are lost in freezing also which is why some people feed actual live food but frozen or freeze dried is much more convenient).

 

[akudewan]

I do feed my fish freeze dried fish.

I have a question: Does freeze drying kill the pathogens present in live food ? Live Tubiflex worms are known to cause disease, would freeze dried food reduce the risk of disease?

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I do feed my fish freeze dried fish.

I have a question: Does freeze drying kill the pathogens present in live food ? Live Tubiflex worms are known to cause disease, would freeze dried food reduce the risk of disease?

Yes, freeze drying does kill off bacteria on the food, and even though freezedried foods tend to be more healthy than fish flakes, there are a couple of other factors to take into consideration;
a. Dried high protein foods of any sort, wether they are fish flakes or freezedried foods like bloodworms, are more likely to cause constipation in a fish than fresh foods. You can feed freezedried foods as often as you like to most fish as long as you feed them alot of veg to balance it out as feeding veg based foods will help prevent constipation.
b. Fresh foods like live tubifex can bring in various fish deseases, but as far as im aware these are killed off as long as the tubifex are killed by freezing. The best thing about fresh/frozen foods is they are very nutritional and natural for fish to eat and amoungst some of the best foods you can feed your fish.
c. Freezedried foods can go stale just as much as fish flakes, freezedried foods and fish flakes can be kept for much longer though if you put them in the fridge or freezer.


A varied healthy diet is often the key for healthy and happy fish, there are no fish that i can think off that actually benefet from having a fish flake only diet, not even goldfish or guppys do- in the past i used to feed my fish alot of fish flakes, now days the fish flakes are only there to add variety to my fish's high veg and protein diets and not the other way around .

 

[akudewan]

Wow, thank you Tokis-Phoenix