Would you dare feed this to your fish???

[Magnum Man]

I ordered some frozen fish food on Amazon, & it took 2 weeks to get here... it's below freezing here today, but it came from Pet's Mart in Fort Worth, Texas, so it's cold right now, maybe semi frozen, it was packaged in a hand cut foam box inside a regular cardboard box, no ice pack or anything... a paperboard packaging box around the plastic cubes is soaked... kind of stinks when I opened the box ( not rotten smell, but stinky ) none of the cubes are cut open or leaked, so the smell is either on the packaging or it stinks so bad, it's going through the plastic... I'm not going to open one here at work... but will investigate further when I get home...

 

[GaryE]

Wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, and would demand a refund. I wouldn't open it.

 

[Magnum Man]

ya... I'm trying to get a refund right now













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[GaryE]

Once it thaws, danger. I've always seen it shipped on higher priced express systems with styro boxes and freezer packs.

 

[Back in the fold]

That’s a shame because San Francisco Bay Brand is the good stuff .

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I feed that brand to my fish, but if it smelled through the packaging? No thanks.

 

[emeraldking]

Is it hard to buy frozen fish food at an lfs? For I wouldn't buy frozen food by mail.

 

[Magnum Man]

I don't have any local fish stores... a couple semi local, but no bets if they have frozen foods... Amazon ships some groceries, some frozen foods... It's cold here... thought I would take a chance... if it would have been here in a couple days, like a lot of orders, it would have been OK... but this one was out 2 weeks before it got here, after it was picked up, & came from the hottest part of the country... didn't think it was worth the risk

 

[ExotixMom]

Might be worth starting a small brine shrimp tank. Tiny tank, an air stone and some "Sea Monkeys"

 

[AJ356]

This is interesting, because how do really know what condition frozen fish food has been in before it gets to our fish's mouths?

Everyone outside the chain of producer and us will not view it anywhere near as important as human food to keep frozen, probably not even the LFS staff.

I use frozen food a lot for fish, and I just assume it's been frozen, unfrozen, frozen, unfrozen, many times over before I feed it to my fish.

 

[ExotixMom]

I ordered some frozen fish food on Amazon, & it took 2 weeks to get here... it's below freezing here today, but it came from Pet's Mart in Fort Worth, Texas, so it's cold right now, maybe semi frozen, it was packaged in a hand cut foam box inside a regular cardboard box, no ice pack or anything... a paperboard packaging box around the plastic cubes is soaked... kind of stinks when I opened the box ( not rotten smell, but stinky ) none of the cubes are cut open or leaked, so the smell is either on the packaging or it stinks so bad, it's going through the plastic... I'm not going to open one here at work... but will investigate further when I get home...View attachment 331455

They sell this brand at Petco. Your tag says you are in MN, and there are Petco's in MN. I suggest getting it from there or at least having it shipped from one of those stores so you get it within a day or 2.

 

[GaryE]

Bloodworms change colours when thawed. They darken. So if they've thawed and been refrozen, you can learn to spot it. Brine shrimp turn to mush.

So, take out a blender. Slowly and painstakingly work through a bag of dessert shrimp. Add baby food pureed peas and carrots, white fleshed fish (also blended), maybe even some water soluble avian vitamins. The old timers would add gelatin to bind it all, although fish can't digest it.

Flatten it into sheets in freezer bags, and freeze it. You can make several kilos at a shot, in about an hour. It isn't free, but it's cheaper than pet food stuff, and you control the quality. You are using variants on the old beef or goat heart recipes from when aquarists inland couldn't get seafood, much more easily digested than any part of a cow. There are people who still buy beefheart, ignoring that it was an improvised solution to a problem we no longer have. Tradition.

You can experiment with a lot of things. I have chicken feed soldier fly larvae I may blend into a food. You can find all sorts of recipes online, and you can replace beefheart with all manner of superior sea food. Avoid oily fish.

Bloodworm and artemia, especially the latter, are not natural fish foods. They are if the fish come from where they naturally occur, and bloodworms are not really common enough to be a staple but around in a lot of places. The are all hobbyist improvised foods that were industrialized. Study what your fish eat, species by species, and it's out there for the finding.

Next year, I will grow a small amount of zuccini in my garden, for the algae eating catfish. I don;t eat that ^&^%^, but the fish sure do if you prep it right. I might grow spinach and romaine too....

 

[Back in the fold]

Is it hard to buy frozen fish food at an lfs? For I wouldn't buy frozen food by mail.

It’s hard to get anything in my forgotten backwoods . You get what PetsMart has or nothing . I just heard that a long time Mom and Pop pet shop here is folding up . The proprietor wants to retire and the children have no interest in it . That leaves one LFS who is struggling and may not last long. The United States is corporate through and through . The people are conditioned by Madison Avenue to march dutifully into the big box stores like the Eloi in “The Time Machine”. Aquarium hobbyists here are lazy and want everything prepackaged and neat and antiseptic. Heaven forbid they get their hands wet and culture live foods or breed fish . There are pockets of real fish keepers here and there who do those things but they are getting old and will soon fade away into eternity . The electronic generation will eventually die too but they will have done nothing with the knowledge bequeathed to them by the old ones and the knowledge will be lost . I was sad that I had no fish food until I met the aquarist who didn’t care .

 

[Magnum Man]

I have some small frozen raw shrimp here, that I have minced before… I just don’t have the time right now, to prepare food for my fish

 

[lottabubbles]

would make good dough ball catfish bait ingredient