Nls Or Hikari

[fishguy2727]

I was just curious. I know some people with shrimp avoid anything that says copper in it. But the proper levels are safe, actually needed. It is an essential element for them.

No, I get no compensation for sharing my experiences. It is not difference than filters, substrates, etc. I have experience with many different types I like to help educate people so they can make decisions based on facts and not on hype, misinformation, misunderstandings, etc.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

In all honesty, a person shouldn't even need proof that it's a top quality food because a person only has to look at the ingredients to know that it's going to be good for them. Coming from a holistic nutrition stand point, as soon as I saw the ingredients, I knew that it was better than any of the other foods I've seen. After all, fish in the wild don't eat wheat and corn and all the other garbage that is in most other brands of fish food. All a person has to do is compare the ingredients of NLS to other brands

So I got one of my containers of NLS Discus Formula and here is a list of the 1st four ingredients:

Whole Antarctic Krill Meal
Whole Herring Meal
Wheat Flour
Whole Squid Meal

Well dog gone there is wheat flour. I guess that means NLS contains garbage ingredients? And I wonder what soybean isolate is and which fish in the wild eat soy? More garbage I guess?

Because I am a nice guy I am going to show you another food that uses a similar pitch as NLS

I would recommend that if you are trying to purchase a top quality tropical fish food, that you search the Web and try each and every tropical fish food that YOU deem to be of top quality and of top nutritional value for at least 2 months. If indeed you follow this recommendation, I'd ask that you include "Almost Natural Tropical Fish Foods" in those tropical fish foods that you try. When deciding which tropical fish food(s) you will continue using, let your fishes' overall health, condition, growth rate and color be your guide.

(The red is mine) Want to know more about it? Google is your friend. I had never even heard of it before tonight.


NLS trumpets how it uses the whole fish in the meal while others use meal made from the less desirable parts of the fish etc. This is what that food site says about fish meals:

Let me open your eyes a little as to what "meals" are. Most of the "meals" that other manufacturers use are processed fish, shrimp, etc., that are ground up, dried into a powder and then put into dry storage on warehouse shelves for anywhere from a couple months to over a year before tropical fish food manufacturers order it to be mixed in with their foods. A lot of preservatives are added to survive the possible long shelf life. During this process much of the natural highly unsaturated fatty acids and natural proteins have been compromised and in fact, mostly lost. Once it is ordered and mixed into the manufacturer's other ingredients, additional preservatives are added to insure it doesn't go bad in their warehouse while they wait for your local store to order it. Once in your local store, it sits on the shelf waiting for you to purchase it. Pretty interesting, isn't it??

I think I will just stick with my variety of foods and feeding regimens based on my specific fish and their needs.

 

[fishguy2727]

Any prepared food needs some sort of a binder, that is all the wheat is in there for. Otherwise ANY food woudl just be a powder when you got it.

Don't give up on it yet. I have used many foods over the years, in varying mixes and exclusively. I tried NLS in a variety and saw no improvement. I didn't see what it could really do until I tried it exclusively. Try feeding it exclusively for a few months and see what a difference it can make.

FYI all those 'specialized to the fish' diets aren't. Almost every company out there has very little variation from one food to the next, including algae wafers.

What is the difference between the needs of neon tetras and goldfish? Plecos and cichlids? Without truly understanding these differences as a hobbyist it is nothing more than guesswork. And their long term nutrition is the last thing that should be left to guesswork.

 

[Caprichoso]

In all honesty, a person shouldn't even need proof that it's a top quality food because a person only has to look at the ingredients to know that it's going to be good for them. Coming from a holistic nutrition stand point, as soon as I saw the ingredients, I knew that it was better than any of the other foods I've seen. After all, fish in the wild don't eat wheat and corn and all the other garbage that is in most other brands of fish food. All a person has to do is compare the ingredients of NLS to other brands

So I got one of my containers of NLS Discus Formula and here is a list of the 1st four ingredients:

Whole Antarctic Krill Meal
Whole Herring Meal
Wheat Flour
Whole Squid Meal

Well dog gone there is wheat flour. I guess that means NLS contains garbage ingredients? And I wonder what soybean isolate is and which fish in the wild eat soy? More garbage I guess?

Because I am a nice guy I am going to show you another food that uses a similar pitch as NLS

I would recommend that if you are trying to purchase a top quality tropical fish food, that you search the Web and try each and every tropical fish food that YOU deem to be of top quality and of top nutritional value for at least 2 months. If indeed you follow this recommendation, I'd ask that you include "Almost Natural Tropical Fish Foods" in those tropical fish foods that you try. When deciding which tropical fish food(s) you will continue using, let your fishes' overall health, condition, growth rate and color be your guide.

(The red is mine) Want to know more about it? Google is your friend. I had never even heard of it before tonight.


NLS trumpets how it uses the whole fish in the meal while others use meal made from the less desirable parts of the fish etc. This is what that food site says about fish meals:

Let me open your eyes a little as to what "meals" are. Most of the "meals" that other manufacturers use are processed fish, shrimp, etc., that are ground up, dried into a powder and then put into dry storage on warehouse shelves for anywhere from a couple months to over a year before tropical fish food manufacturers order it to be mixed in with their foods. A lot of preservatives are added to survive the possible long shelf life. During this process much of the natural highly unsaturated fatty acids and natural proteins have been compromised and in fact, mostly lost. Once it is ordered and mixed into the manufacturer's other ingredients, additional preservatives are added to insure it doesn't go bad in their warehouse while they wait for your local store to order it. Once in your local store, it sits on the shelf waiting for you to purchase it. Pretty interesting, isn't it??

I think I will just stick with my variety of foods and feeding regimens based on my specific fish and their needs.

I wasn't debating what NLS has in it. I'm aware as I do feed my fish the product. I was merely stating that compared to other brands that I've seen and used, it's a much better quality product. Maybe that wasn't clear in my other post, my apology. Other than a couple of binding products, the ingredients are very good in NLS. I don't like to see things used like by-products and other "lesser quality" fish and plant/veg parts. Ideally, a person "could" make their own fish food and avoid those couple of additives but who the heck has time for that? All in all, NLS ingredients are far better than any other fish food ingredients I have seen. Now, if there comes a better food on the market, I would probably switch to that one but I think this is as good as it gets for the moment. As far as the rest of what you quoted, I'm not sure what you were trying to get across? I don't get why you inject your red quote into someone else's quote...or is that whole paragraph your quote? Anyway, once again TTA, your posts confuse me.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

The red was to allow you to find the site without my linking to it. So Google the words in red and then go read that guys fish food info. You should not be surprised at what you read because it is very similar to what you read at the NLS site. My point was it was sure easy to find another food maker who essentially made the same claims for his food as NLS does. So why not put your NLS on the shelf and give the other food an exclusive try for a few months. After all the maker said to try exclusive feeding with several food brands, including his, to see which one was actually the best food to be fed exclusively. Even NLS did not go that far.

Your post said

After all, fish in the wild don't eat wheat and corn and all the other garbage that is in most other brands of fish food.

Now that would be fine except for the fact that the very food you were trumpeting contains the very thing you call garbage. My point was really simple- you should do your homework and get your facts straight before you post them. Some form of grain product is used in almost any processed fish food as fishguy2727 noted. Thus your implication that this is a bad thing and that NLS did not do it is not really accurate.

I have noticed that there are lot of statements made on this site which are not true. Many are urban myths. The reason misinformation in this hobby is accepted as fact as that there are too many folks willing to blindly repeat it and way too few folks willing to challenge it.

As for any claim that NLS fed exclusively for a couple of months makes fish look better and appear to be healthier, I would have to say this is anecdotal in that there is no way to verify it. I am not even sure how one could design a reliable study to prove it one way or another. What I do find interesting is that people on this forum are willing to dismiss the work of Dr. Timothy Hovanec regarding nitrifying bacteria because he makes a product but folks willingly accept the claims by NLS (Pablo Tepoot) without any research to back it up at all.

 

[fishguy2727]

There is arguably no true research to back it up, but more importantly there are many hobbyists whose experience supports the idea that at the very least NLS is the best stuff out there, even if it is not a level or two above and beyond other current brands.

Granted none of it is truly scientific, but we will never find a study of which fish food is 'best'. If people are waiting to see a study that truly 'proves' which brand of fish food is 'best', they will never stop waiting.

The difference is seen in the fish. If you haven't seen fish fed NLS exclusively for months it may be hard to believe, but if you have you know what it can do. In addition, there are many cases that demonstrate NLS is above and beyond, examples not matched by ANY other fish food on the market. These are things like keeping moorish idols alive for years on NLS exclusively. Mandarin gobies eating it at all (and the captive bred ones being raised on NLS exclusively). Reversing HLLE in marine angels. Galaxy rasboras breeding on NLS exclusively. Crayfish breeding on NLS exclusively. Goldfish breeding on NLS exclusively. Bringing colors out of fish that other foods couldn't. If you read through NLS's site and watch the video you will see examples of how NLS is above and beyond any other brand out there right now. If anyone can provide any diet (not just another brand of food but any diet at all) that keeps moorish idols alive in captivity for years, please share. I have seen people argue against it for months and finally give in for one reason or another and just give it a try (the only thing I ever ask) and then become just as strong of a proponent of it as anyone, even PMing me thanking me and wishing they had tried it earlier.

In the end we can argue for a week every time one of these threads pops up. we can give a bunch of theoretical points for both sides and go back and forth and never truly prove anything. But in the end the only thing that matters is how well our own fish do on it. This requires nothing more than a jar of the food and some time. The absolute worst this can do is prove that what you were feeding before was effectively just as good as NLS. Best case you find that they do even better on NLS and you start feeding that instead (to your fishes' benefit).

 

[Geoff-]

We can argue about this day after day in thread after thread, but at the end of it all you cannot know how good it really is, or is not, until you try feeding it exclusively for at least a few months. Worst case you find out you somehow already had a very good diet and do not need to feed NLS exclusively. Your fish deserve this trial.

this. To find out which foods are most nurtritionally complete you need to feed an exclusive diet for a few months. Do this for every type of food and judge which one made your fish look the healthiest.

I vary the diet between flake, micropellet and algae wafer because *I* like the variety of watching my fish chase after different meal types. Not because I'm somehow trying to come up with a holistic diet.

 

[fishguy2727]

IMO it shouldn't be about our entertainment, but their health.

I haven't found another food that has proven to be worth trying. By looking at the ingredients and the lack of good examples suggesting a particular food may have potential to be above and beyond, there is no need to keep trying other foods that have no known potential to exceed NLS.

 

[Trienchieu]

Ok..... So NLS or no? Too much debate going on here

 

[Caprichoso]

Ok..... So NLS or no? Too much debate going on here

Yes, NLS is very good quality. Hikari could be a runner up but still doesn't equal to NLS. NLS contains better ingredients IMO. Yes, there are bad ingredients in there like flour but it's to keep the product together so really can't be avoided. The OP just like to be argumentative. After reading the ingredient list from several different brands of food, NLS has the best ingredients that I have seen. This info has not been obtained from their website but from me actually LOOKING at the ingredient list. In addition to NLS I also feed as an occasional treat, freeze dried daphnia and blood worm. I feed my shrimp Hikari Crab Bite because it contains no copper. I am breeding high grade CRS shrimp and they are very sensitive to copper so I will not feed anything except that. So since I am having much success with it, I will not change to another food.

 

[Mikaila31]

I have NLS, hikari, and a lot of ken's fish food. I am using hikari first since thats what my fish seem to enjoy the most. I will use up the NLS when I run out of hikari. Then I intend to feed ken's food from then on as my only prepared food. I will never feed a single food exclusively, there is too much risk IMO. I see no risk with varying the diet with frozen and fresh food. I would never feed any freeze-dried foods. Even my small fish get raw fish to eat occasionally. Proteins can be easily denatured. No processed food is going to be as nutrient rich as the same raw or frozen food. Even freezing can reduce nutritional value. Given the price of NLS and how even my rainbows didn't want to eat it at first I don't see any reason to buy it again. What is the reason of paying for high quality ingredients when they are reduced to a mere pellet and lose the value that makes them high quality.

 

[Caprichoso]

Freeze dried retains about 98% of all the nutrition. Why wouldn't you feed it? All the process does is remove water. The faster the freeze drying is done, the more nutrients stay in the food.

 

[fishguy2727]

There is no significant loss of nutrients with proper processing.

Fresh foods are not nutritionally complete or balanced. They are equivalent to only the first few ingredients in high quality pellets, but lack all the other additives that provide all the other vital nutrients.

The ingredients are reduced just by being made into a pellet. In fact they can be very well preserved.

Many fish don't take to NLS because it tastes very different. There is garlic in it and the Thera+A formulas have a lot. This can throw off many fish enough to keep them from eating it if they are not hungry. Give them a little time and they will take to it, and be better for it. Letting the fish choose what to eat is like asking a kid to choose what to eat, it won't usually result in the healthiest diet.

 

[KISSfn]

I purchased some expensive NLS Thera+A after reading a long thread on this food with many comments by fishguy2727 who seemed very passionate about this product on another thread on this forum. My problem is my fish don't like it, won't eat it and I end up vacuuming a lot of uneaten pellets out of the tank. How do I get my fish to eat it?

 

[fishguy2727]

Just give it time. It doesn't taste like other foods and that throws many fish off at first if they aren't hungry. Don't feed other foods, just get them hungry and they will take it.