Post by Admin on Apr 12, 2018 10:52:05 GMT -6
Dry fish foods
BSD Fishfood order 4/12/2018
I just don’t like flake fish food. I’ll go to great lengths to avoid it! lol
It was time to order some fresh 5-50 micron golden pearls to use as a 1st fry food this breeding season—along with whatever greenwater I can culture, and vinegar eels. I also utilize liquid reef foods, and other random powdered foods that I don’t use often enough to bother mentioning here.
This shipment just came in from Brine Shrimp Direct. These guys, Xtreme, and Sera have all recently come out with new smaller pellet sizes.
Brine Shrimp Direct offered up .6mm and 1mm pellets. Awesome! Exactly what I was looking for and that meant I didn’t have to put in orders with multiple retailers to get this fish food order done.
I've been using Xtreme's 1.5mm Peewee pellets for a couple years; but have been wishing they would make smaller pellet sizes because 1.5mm is just too big for juvie bows and other smaller fish. Their pellets also sink a bit faster than I would like. It’s still awesome fish food and I’ll keep using their products.
After spending most of a day online comparing ingredients, prices, and pellet sizes, I decided to go with BSD's pellets. I like their ingredients list the best---except for the fact they add a lot of astaxanthin--a natural color enhancer. I just don’t feel the need to enhance the colors of my fish, they are quite colorful without extra help—I also don’t want to grow fish with enhanced colors, as I take photos for species ID’s and want their colors to be as accurate as possible. That being said, seems like every fish food has some sort of enhancers added; so I went with the products with the shortest ingredients lists.
The .6mm pellets seem pretty good for my i.werneri and +/-1 inch fish.
The 1mm suited my 1-2 inch fish very well.(juvie bows, celebes, peacock gudgeons, etc)
As I’d hoped, the 200-300 micron golden pearls; similar in size to baby brine shrimp, are great for i.werneri rhadinocentrus ornatus, and young juvie rainbows.
The 500-800 micron golden pearls are close in size to the .6mm pellets. The rhads, celebes, and juvie bows gobbled them up.
Size reference… 100 micron = .1mm
So; 200-300 micron = .2-.3mm 500-800 micron =.5-.8 micron
The pellets have a nice, slow, sink to them and they float well in the water column.
The golden pearls, stay on the surface longer, and take a little surface agitation to really mix down in to the water column.
Remember to keep your containers of foods closed up tight in the fridge or freezer; and only keep what you need for a couple weeks at room temperature to ensure you keep all that great food nice and fresh for your fish.
The following sites offer great foods and I’ve bought from them often over the years:
www.brineshrimpdirect.com (Best place for brine shrimp eggs, Obviously 😉 )
jehmco.com (Xtreme dealer, and other good foods….krill fines are a good 2nd bow fry food, and cyclopeeze are another great small fish food)
www.swisstropicals.com (Sera and Xtreme foods dealer, plus don’t forget their Awesome filters)
bsd fishfood by Rainbow Bratt, on Flickr
