Fish Food Recommendations

[Boundava]

I am currently looking for some good quality cichlid sinking foods (pellets/wafers) for my larger cichlids (Peruvian wolf fish, severums, Blood-red parrot and Astronotus crassipinnis).

I have been looking at Hikari, Omega One, NLS, and Northfin. Their prior food was Ken's fish food meat-eater wafers but it did make a mess in their tank.

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[CassCats]

Northfin has really good stuff, their larger carnivore pellets also make great "wafer" alternatives to corydoras. My fish really liked those and they'd be fantastic for large cichlids.

NLS and OmegaOne are also good brands, so you can't really go wrong with them.

Hikari is a gamble. Some stuff is good, some stuff is not. It's not as high quality as the others listed here.

 

[Boundava]

Northfin has really good stuff, their larger carnivore pellets also make great "wafer" alternatives to corydoras. My fish really liked those and they'd be fantastic for large cichlids.

NLS and OmegaOne are also good brands, so you can't really go wrong with them.

Hikari is a gamble. Some stuff is good, some stuff is not. It's not as high quality as the others listed here.

Thank you for your suggestions!

I was looking at Hikari and don't like the ingredients; wheat flour, wheat starch, corn gluten meal, soybean meal, and rice bran are within the first 5-7 ingredients in the Cichlid gold and staple foods. Not good ingredients=lots of digestive waste= ,

I really like the NLS Tropical ingredients as the first five ingredients are Krill, squid, what bran and kelp. Plus it includes Bentonite clay (for digestion), marigold and astaxanthin (last 2 for color). I did not see large Cichlid pellets, but there tropical pellets go up to 10.5 mm!
They also have the Insectum line that has Insects (Mealworms, Silkworm Pupa, Black Soldier Larvae, Crickets, Grasshoppers); Krill (Euphasia superba), whole wheat flour, fish oil, and seaweed as the first 5 ingredients. It does also come with Bentonite clay, marigold and astaxanthin but only goes to 3-3.5 mm.

I may grab a smaller container of each and alternate. They get supplementals such as live mealworms, live earthworms, live crickets and freeze dried tubifex worms.

 

[CassCats]

Variety is important so by all means if you are open to trying them all, go for a couple of them.

They do have a carnivore one, it's about 10mm. This is the one I have used, for both my cories and carnivorous plecos

Carnivore Formula – NorthFin Premium Fish Food

www.northfin.com

 

[Boundava]

Silly me, I just looked at Northfin and they also have great quality food with similar ingredients to NLS. Guess I will just have to see what they prefer, thanks again!

 

[MaloK]

There's also "New Life Spectrum" that makes a very large choice of cichlid food and most are available in multiple sizes bites.

The ingredients are on the luxurious side, pretty low in any kind of flour and full of "real" stuff. Check em out, you might find something to enhance your menu variety.

 

[gwand]

Ditto that. New Life Spectrum and Omega One are my dailies. Great stuff.

 

[Boundava]

Yeah I was looking at NLS (New Life Spectrum) and Northfin. I like the ingredients more than Omega One and definitely more than Hikari's wheat,rice,corn fest. The studies promoting their foods are paid for and done by themselves so of course it is beneficial.

 

[sharkweek178]

Bug Bites has a cichlids formula. Fluval really changed the fish food game with their insect based formulas. They're another company with high quality ingredients.

 

[CassCats]

Oh yeah Fluval Bug Bites are fantastic, do really recommend them!

I feed the tropical sized pellets to all my tanks but I use the pleco sticks from them to feed my goldfish the regular cichlid sized pellet might be a little small for OP's fish, so I'd suggest getting the stick types of theirs if you went Bug Bites in the diet too. Really good stuff

 

[Boundava]

Yeah, I like that the bug bites has solderfly larva and fish protein concentrate as the first 2 ingredient. However 3, 4 and 5 are green peas, potato, wheat...
So reading about potato, it can help with fish growth; peas add fiber, but are not recommended to be a daily staple; wheat is usually to supplement the protein % in the nutritional analysis (though it is not absorbable protein) and as a binder/filler to hold the ingredients together.

Was reading an interesting article on fish food ingredients and was shocked to see that Omega One large sinking pellets contains all 3 of the synthetic fat preservatives that are not beneficial to fish (anyone) and have been shown to impede growth and be a carcinogen that has been banned in many countries.

It's an older one (I think monsterfishkeepers.com also has a similar article).

Fish Food Ingredients

There are many documents and web sites dedicated to analysis of Dog Foods, Cat Foods, Cattle Feed, and feeds for other live stock. However, when I decided to research the ingredients found in fish foods, I found an absence of information. This article is an attempt to at least partially fill...

web.archive.org

same article:

Fish Food Ingredients Analysis

Note: The following was originally published on http://www.oscarfish.com/fish-food-ingredients.html and was written by Kmuda. The OscarFish.com site is no

infolific.com

Omega One large sinking pellets
Ingredients
Salmon, Whole Herring, Wheat Germ, Wheat Flour, Whole Shrimp, Pea Protein, Rice Bran, Kelp, Wheat Gluten, Astaxanthin, Canthaxanthin, Marigold Extract, Potassium Sorbate, Ethoxyquin (Preservative), BHT (Preservative), BHA (Preservative), Natural And Artificial Colors, Ascorbyl Monophosphate (Source Of Vitamin C), Niacin, Inositol, Folic Acid, Biotin, Riboflavin, Pantothenic Acid, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement.
Guaranteed Analysis
Crude Protein 42.0% min, Crude Fat 11.0% min, Crude Fiber 2.0% max, Moisture 8.5% max, Ash 8.0% max

Hikari foods also have added food coloring in addition to its wheat, rice, and corn meals/brans/starch and flakes. They also add brewer's yeast to inflate protein content and some oth their foods have DL-Methionine which the Author of the linked article suggests is added to foods to increase aminos acids-indicating protein deficiency within the food

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This stuff makes my eyes and brain hurt, lol. So I think I will be sticking to NLS and Northfin; maybe Fluval Bug Bites but I like that both NLS and Northfin have the Astaxanthin, and Montmorillonite Clay as well as whole fish, and krill and NLS includes a variety of seaweed like Ulva Seaweed, Chlorella Seaweed, Wakame Seaweed, Kelp, and Spirulina.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I've been feeding omega one for years, but you're right, it does have a lot of grain in it. I think I'll try some northfin and see if the critters like it any better.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I've been dosing Bacter AE about once a week for my hillstream loaches, too. It's hard to feed because I have to turn off the pumps for an hour or so until it sinks, and I can't really tell if the fish are eating it or not. But I've heard it's good for them. ???

 

[gwand]

My fry are eating Bacter AE and/or the biofilm it generates.

 

[Boundava]

Lol, bought some of that for my shrimp.
You can also use solient green right in the tank. I have been doing this in the shrimp tank as well.