Fish food ingredients

[NetBelleAnie]

So, lemme preface this by saying I'm basing my thoughts on what I know from keeping cats and dogs and may have no bearing on anything aquatic.

In dog and cat food, some ingredients are considered the best, and some the worst.  Pure meat meals (beef, chicken, lamb, etc) are considered the best things universally to have, while many cheaper starches (corn gluten, wheat gluten, soy, etc) are considered filler or even bad to have.  Other things (rice meal, pea meal) are in the middle ground.  As someone who has had animals that are allergic to corn, to chicken, or to some unknown (that made my cat vomit blood, yuck), I spend a lot of time staring at ingredient lists deciding what is good for my animals.  Now, there's the grain-free fad, which can make it harder to find a food with the ingredients you want (wanting something with rice or grains but no chicken products was very hard).  There are literally thousands of foods devoted to just 2 different species (cats and dogs), but when it comes to fish foods, there's maybe a few hundred commercially prepped food for hundreds, if not thousands of species in the aquarium.

My question is, how do you decide which ingredients are right for the fish you are keeping?  Do we look at the ingredients themselves, and decide if it's a good choice, even though there's no way x species would eat x ingredient in the wild? Krill, prawns and brine shrimp are very popular in tropical foods, but those are all oceanic species, not something you'd find in freshwater.  Every dry food requires binders like wheat, soy, etc just so the product remains in a form that doesn't rot immediately upon opening the container, but I doubt the average betta or tetra would naturally eat a piece of those starches if you stuck it in front of them.   Letting the pet choose isn't always viable, since I know that no matter what the species, if a food seems more appealing (by sight,, smell or taste)  doesn't mean it's actually healthier for them.  (I will pick a cheeseburger over a salad every time, and my Labradors have eaten anything from frozen steaks, squirrels, parakeets to ceramic briquettes, bars of soap and more.)  Even if we go into basics like carnivore and herbivore diets, every veggie diet has a bunch of fish or crustacean based foods added usually as one of the top 5 ingredients based on weight. 

So, how do we pick?  I'm curious to know everyone's thoughts, since it seems every manufacturer thinks their food is the best, and it gets tiring going through individual product reviews on any website when people don't give proper reviews.

 

[Odd Duck]

On 3/18/2022 at 2:49 AM, NetBelleAnie said:

So, lemme preface this by saying I'm basing my thoughts on what I know from keeping cats and dogs and may have no bearing on anything aquatic.

In dog and cat food, some ingredients are considered the best, and some the worst.  Pure meat meals (beef, chicken, lamb, etc) are considered the best things universally to have, while many cheaper starches (corn gluten, wheat gluten, soy, etc) are considered filler or even bad to have.  Other things (rice meal, pea meal) are in the middle ground.  As someone who has had animals that are allergic to corn, to chicken, or to some unknown (that made my cat vomit blood, yuck), I spend a lot of time staring at ingredient lists deciding what is good for my animals.  Now, there's the grain-free fad, which can make it harder to find a food with the ingredients you want (wanting something with rice or grains but no chicken products was very hard).  There are literally thousands of foods devoted to just 2 different species (cats and dogs), but when it comes to fish foods, there's maybe a few hundred commercially prepped food for hundreds, if not thousands of species in the aquarium.

My question is, how do you decide which ingredients are right for the fish you are keeping?  Do we look at the ingredients themselves, and decide if it's a good choice, even though there's no way x species would eat x ingredient in the wild? Krill, prawns and brine shrimp are very popular in tropical foods, but those are all oceanic species, not something you'd find in freshwater.  Every dry food requires binders like wheat, soy, etc just so the product remains in a form that doesn't rot immediately upon opening the container, but I doubt the average betta or tetra would naturally eat a piece of those starches if you stuck it in front of them.   Letting the pet choose isn't always viable, since I know that no matter what the species, if a food seems more appealing (by sight,, smell or taste)  doesn't mean it's actually healthier for them.  (I will pick a cheeseburger over a salad every time, and my Labradors have eaten anything from frozen steaks, squirrels, parakeets to ceramic briquettes, bars of soap and more.)  Even if we go into basics like carnivore and herbivore diets, every veggie diet has a bunch of fish or crustacean based foods added usually as one of the top 5 ingredients based on weight. 

So, how do we pick?  I'm curious to know everyone's thoughts, since it seems every manufacturer thinks their food is the best, and it gets tiring going through individual product reviews on any website when people don't give proper reviews.

 

It certainly can be confusing with companies that spend millions of dollars on marketing campaigns, yet nothing at all on research that increases our knowledge about pet nutrition.  While companies that actually do spend millions on nutrition research get bad-mouthed for having corn, wheat, and soy products in their ingredient list.  The companies that are spending millions on marketing have multiple recalls on their record and the companies getting bad-mouthed for “fillers” do not.

Those same companies that are only marketing and not researching, are incriminated in an increase in heart disease in dogs that is sometimes responsive to switching to a better researched diet.  Please don’t believe the garbage, grain-free hype from the newcomer companies that have no business being allowed to make dog food.  If the company doesn’t have multiple, full time, board certified veterinary nutritionists on the payroll, run far away as fast as you can.  If they’ve never published a study on animal nutrition in a peer-reviewed scientific publication, just say NO.  If their label only says “Formulated to meet the nutritional levels established by the AAFCO dog food nutrient profiles” then there have been no diet trials done.  If feeding trials have been done the label will say “Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate that [product name] provides complete and balanced nutrition.”

The really tricky bit is that many prescription pet foods will not say the part about “complete and balanced nutrition” because they are designed for specific medical conditions that will make them inappropriate for general use so they can’t have the “complete and balanced” label.  If your veterinarian is recommending a prescription diet, you have to either trust them to provide you with good quality advice or you need to find a different veterinarian that you can trust.

Please don’t believe the grain-free marketing hype on the over-the-counter products that is based on nothing medically accurate but purely on a nonsense marketing ploy about what your pet would eat in the wild.  Climbing off my soapbox now because my pet food peeve doesn’t need more air time here.

As far as fish food, until there is a commercial food produced by a company that is willing to publish research studies that include life-long diet trials, and research that improves our knowledge about fish nutrition, it’s very hard to make a decision when all you have is a marketing plan to choose from.  There are studies about nutrition content of various live foods, studies about specific protein levels or about other specific nutrient levels in fish but they are almost all about food fish and quickly growing these food fish to best market weight.

I haven’t seen any studies on tropical fish that included life-long studies like are done on dogs and cats by the most respected companies and may never see studies like that despite the fish food business being a million dollar market.  It is an area of the pet food industry that has very minimal regulations and I can’t say that I’ve ever heard any information about regulations on fish foods.  Something I should check into and see what I can find.

Until then, I try to select foods based primarily on nutrient levels and as much knowledge as I can gather about the species of fish I’m keeping.  I supplement with as much live foods and “real” foods like vegetables when appropriate.  Unfortunately I have to somewhat rely on the fish in the tank to do appropriate choosing from the foods I have offered.  If you have a fish breeder you know and trust that has raised multiple generations of the fish you have, you can weigh that into the equation also.  Unfortunately, that type of anecdotal information isn’t readily available and doesn’t carry as much weight as a properly designed scientific study would, but it can be the only information we have available to help us decide.  A recommendation by a trusted shopkeeper can be weighed in, too.

There is no good, solid, widely applicable answer when we don’t have the information we need to make truly wise choices.  We simply don’t have as much accurate data available as we would like in order to be able to make fully informed decisions.  We have to trust those we have faith in or provide a wide variety of foods and depend on the versatility of the fish’s own bodies to extract the nutrients they need from the ingredients provided.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Odd Duck

[Guppysnail]

@Odd Duck I just had my new kitten to the vet with my other cat for the sneezes. When we got our new kitten they said he had diarrhea on arrival so they put him on grain free to cure it. 🙄 I always use science diet for my cats and several years ago I asked my vet about the grain free thing and they explained the heart stuff and all the wonderful information you just shared. My husband would not switch him (it’s “technically” his kitten) until the vet just reexplained all this to him at our sneezes visit. 
Marketing hype can be convincing and it is sad because it seems the information from credible companies who spend so much more on research than marketing gets overshadowed. The marketing hype that is flooded into people becomes accepted because “all these companies say this new fad thing it must be true”. (My husbands rationale) 
Yet again it is a boon to have you on the forum and so willing to share your knowledge.  

[Biotope Biologist]

Pet nutrition is a very interesting thing. For instance our 2 cats (brother and sister) came from an adoption parent who fed them iams and milk. Well that was the ONLY thing those two would eat for the first couple years. We tried all of the expensive brands (we have the good fortune of living near Mud Bay chains). They’d turn their nose. We tried fresh meats from a local butcher. They were delicious to us but again nope not even a sniff in that direction.

 

Fast forward another year and our female cat was losing hair and developing hives all over her body. The vet told us about a brand to try. Can’t remember off the top of my head, but it is a top shelf name brand. Hives slowly started going away now the female cat only eats the wet food of that brand and the brother only eats the kibble of same brand. He will occasionally pretend to lick his share of wet food to piss off his sister but ya know, siblings. Oh also their milk craving is still borderline demonic. You open a packet of mozzarella or have left over cheesecake from the factory and you’ll have a cat nose mushed into it 0.5 seconds later.

 

I also adopted a bearded dragon who was abandoned in a foreclosed house for months. He was thin and when I got him home he ate human sized salads and 20 crickets per day. He also got outdoor suntime to digest. And was trained to be off leash, but I digress. He decided he didn’t want vegetables anymore period. He had quite a varied insect diet. Roaches, moths, hornworms, silkworms, etc. I tried tricking him into eating his greens all sorts of ways. Eventually with my vets approval I started starving him of his protein and only feeding vegetables. Did this for 3 months. His stubbornness was far superior to mine and so I caved. For the rest of his life he ate only gutloaded insects in bliss while we sent in fecal samples every 6 months to the lab. Every vet would tell you, you can’t do this with your beardy as adults they should be eating about 70% greens. 
 

My point being sometimes your pets personality and tastes dictate what you can and can’t feed them. Now we get to fish. I’ve had a hodgepodge over the years. Many fed only live foods and frozen blocks. Oscars in the wild are insectivorous mostly. Lurking under leaves in ambush. Their fish diet is limited, I think if I remember correctly it was 10% fish 75% insects and 15% fruits and nuts in gut analysis. And yet people feed them feeder fish as majority diet. Or pelleted food that used to contain beef heart and bone meal. I’ve sold plenty of fish food. I used to just tell people “pick the cheapest flake food they are all the same.” Even if you look at hikari which I prefer their specialized diets to feed my fish with a supplement of live foods and frozen foods the ingredients looks identical to those of aqueon or even tetra. Some use pea meal as the binder some use wheat. Fish meal is just all the parts we don’t use in processing plants. It’s almost exclusively marine.

Ingredients: Fish meal, wheat flour, flaked corn, brewers dried yeast, corn gluten meal, wheat starch, rice bran, spirulina, garlic, DL-methionine, astaxanthin, choline chloride, vitamin E supplement, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (stabilized vitamin C), inositol, d-calcium pantothenate, riboflavin, vitamin A supplement, ...

 

I would go on but @Odd Duck I think said it better

 

 

Oh but I would like to add… I don’t think they still do it anymore but as marketing people would put 17 essential nutrients! Tricked everyone until I explained they are using the biology terminology of “essential” which just means the body can’t produce itself not that it is absolutely required for the organism to survive.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Biotope Biologist

[modified lung]

One of my co-workers told me about working on a channel catfish farm. They used a feed that was made from whole fish. When they switch to a feed that used only the meat fillets, the catfish all developed nutrient deficiencies and diseases. Turns out they needed something from the guts of the fish they feed on.

[Anon]

If you're a club member, check out the talk by Barbie Fiorintino. She feeds her fish with all sorts of natural and nontraditional foods. Rosario Lacorte is also a good source if you want to explore the effects diet can have on a fish. 

A side note: my family owned a dog rescue, and I've helped raised hundreds of dogs on varying diets, from full raw to cheap kibble and everything in between. Nothing is an absolute game changer, trends come and go, and some dogs will live 15-20 superb years eating the cheapest food possible. Something worth thinking about. 

[Odd Duck]

On 3/18/2022 at 11:42 AM, modified lung said:

One of my co-workers told me about working on a channel catfish farm. They used a feed that was made from whole fish. When they switch to a feed that used only the meat fillets, the catfish all developed nutrient deficiencies and diseases. Turns out they needed something from the guts of the fish they feed on.

More likely from the bones and the solid organs, than the “guts” (intestines) specifically.  You know, those pesky “by products” that get such a bad name in the dog and cat food industry.  Those same solid organs (liver, kidneys, spleen) that are highest in nutrients and the first to be eaten by those wild animals that take down large prey.  Yeah, those “bad by-products” are the best part of the animal nutritionally.  And why a certain blue company got successfully sued by one of the big names that got dissed so much in the blue commercials.  The big name company ran tests on the blue company’s food and proved they were using the by-products they were bad mouthing and advertising they never use.  The blue company’s excuse?  “It was a subcontractor.”

Sorry, stepping off my soapbox again.  This really is one of,the things that gets me going the most and I waste sooooooooo much time explaining why people should reconsider their pet’s food when it has a heart murmur or is in heart failure and I hear they are feeding one of the suspect brands of food.  It’s infuriating that the companies are not held to a higher standard and forced to do at least minimum diet trials.  Our pet food laws need a serious revamp!

[modified lung]

@Odd Duck I didn't realize guts are considering just the intestines. 

Do you happen to know much about freeze dried fish food? I've been told both that they have the best nutrition and that they don't have any nutrition. 

[NetBelleAnie]

@Odd Duck you can stay on your soapbox, I understand all of this.  Considering that prepared pet food has only been in existence for maybe the last hundred years (canned horse meat from leftover warhorses from WW1) while dogs have been surviving off of human scraps since they separated from wolves, while cats have always been used as pest control, it seems almost silly how people will preach that their pets need the finest cuts of human-grade meat to live.

I just wonder about how different sources of nutrient types affect the average healthy fish.  Is the protein from salmon or krill better than the protein from fish meal?  Is the protein from fish meal better than the protein from soy wheat or pea?  I'm not sure how advanced the taste bugs are on the average freshwater species of fish, but I know both movement and smell can stimulate feeding (at least it works for trout/bass fishing). 

It just always gives me pause when I see items like "dried bakery product" as a listed ingredient (Looking at you algae wafers) or "hydrolyzed vegetable sucrose polyesters" which is Olestra.  (The things you learn from reading things like science studies on the internet.)

[Odd Duck]

On 3/19/2022 at 5:27 PM, modified lung said:

@Odd Duck I didn't realize guts are considering just the intestines. 

Do you happen to know much about freeze dried fish food? I've been told both that they have the best nutrition and that they don't have any nutrition. 

It depends on how you define it.  For me, I separate intestines from the solid organs nutritionally.  Partly because people get grossed out by intestines and because they are typically used minimally in most pet foods.  When we start talking about the gut ball of a bird anatomically, and especially on X-rays, it’s a more inclusive term.  😆 

As far as freeze dried, it very much depends on the food you’re discussing and how carefully it was prepared.  Some freeze dried foods retain nutrients well, but the nutrients can also be damaged by the process if not done well.  Some of the more popular fish foods that are freeze dried are those that are higher in chitin since they freeze dry more easily and hold their shape better.  Chitin isn’t super high in available nutrients because it’s difficult to digest even though it is fairly high in protein.   An old leather boot or feathers are very high in protein, but not very digestible unless you treat them to some pretty fancy processing.

If foods are allowed to start to spoil or drift past prime before freeze drying, they won’t be as nutritious either.  For us, most frozen vegetables and fruits are more nutritious than many fresh on the shelf in the grocery store.  Many veggies and fruits are processed and frozen very quickly after harvest (literally within hours).  Fresh has to be shipped, sometimes very long distances, to get to us.  So even though freezing reduces nutrients a bit, shipping time often reduces nutrients much more than freezing very soon after harvest.  Home grown or farmer’s market produce are often more nutritious, especially in vitamin content which tends to suffer the most deterioration with time after harvest.

So, high chitin foods like Daphnia and bloodworms don’t have as much available and digestible protein as the label might lead you to believe.

[Odd Duck]

On 3/19/2022 at 6:09 PM, NetBelleAnie said:

@Odd Duck you can stay on your soapbox, I understand all of this.  Considering that prepared pet food has only been in existence for maybe the last hundred years (canned horse meat from leftover warhorses from WW1) while dogs have been surviving off of human scraps since they separated from wolves, while cats have always been used as pest control, it seems almost silly how people will preach that their pets need the finest cuts of human-grade meat to live.

I just wonder about how different sources of nutrient types affect the average healthy fish.  Is the protein from salmon or krill better than the protein from fish meal?  Is the protein from fish meal better than the protein from soy wheat or pea?  I'm not sure how advanced the taste bugs are on the average freshwater species of fish, but I know both movement and smell can stimulate feeding (at least it works for trout/bass fishing). 

It just always gives me pause when I see items like "dried bakery product" as a listed ingredient (Looking at you algae wafers) or "hydrolyzed vegetable sucrose polyesters" which is Olestra.  (The things you learn from reading things like science studies on the internet.)

I know that multiple studies have been done on feeding different protein sources to food fish.  But the studies are mostly done looking at cheap protein sources because they are trying to make money on food fish, and build muscle mass (meat) as quickly and cheaply as possible.  They are not looking at overall long term health of the individual.  I don’t know if anybody has really looked at higher quality protein sources or other food sources for pet tropicals.

I would not expect there to be large differences between different types of fish meals but krill brings in some chitin which will test as protein but not be as digestible as straight fish meal, but it’s cheaper and a little chitin isn’t a bad thing, necessarily.  Think of it like the lettuce of the meat based fish food ingredients, it helps keep “things” moving.  Plant based proteins or carbs are more likely to have a more significant difference in effects on different species since some fish are adapted to digest plants and some aren’t.

Studies are definitely indicated, so if someone wants to fund a couple million bucks towards learning more about pet tropical fish nutritional needs, I’ll be glad to help!  I am not a nutritionist, but I know people, and I know people that know people.  😆 

[modified lung]

On 3/19/2022 at 4:20 PM, Odd Duck said:

It depends on how you define it.  For me, I separate intestines from the solid organs nutritionally.  Partly because people get grossed out by intestines and because they are typically used minimally in most pet foods.  When we start talking about the gut ball of a bird anatomically, and especially on X-rays, it’s a more inclusive term.  😆 

As far as freeze dried, it very much depends on the food you’re discussing and how carefully it was prepared.  Some freeze dried foods retain nutrients well, but the nutrients can also be damaged by the process if not done well.  Some of the more popular fish foods that are freeze dried are those that are higher in chitin since they freeze dry more easily and hold their shape better.  Chitin isn’t super high in available nutrients because it’s difficult to digest even though it is fairly high in protein.   An old leather boot or feathers are very high in protein, but not very digestible unless you treat them to some pretty fancy processing.

If foods are allowed to start to spoil or drift past prime before freeze drying, they won’t be as nutritious either.  For us, most frozen vegetables and fruits are more nutritious than many fresh on the shelf in the grocery store.  Many veggies and fruits are processed and frozen very quickly after harvest (literally within hours).  Fresh has to be shipped, sometimes very long distances, to get to us.  So even though freezing reduces nutrients a bit, shipping time often reduces nutrients much more than freezing very soon after harvest.  Home grown or farmer’s market produce are often more nutritious, especially in vitamin content which tends to suffer the most deterioration with time after harvest.

So, high chitin foods like Daphnia and bloodworms don’t have as much available and digestible protein as the label might lead you to believe.

Thanks for the detailed answer. That makes a lot of sense. Isn't chitin a carbohydrate though? Or is it similar enough to protein that it can be listed as a protein?

On 3/19/2022 at 4:35 PM, Odd Duck said:

I know that multiple studies have been done on feeding different protein sources to food fish.  But the studies are mostly done looking at cheap protein sources because they are trying to make money on food fish, and build muscle mass (meat) as quickly and cheaply as possible.  They are not looking at overall long term health of the individual.  I don’t know if anybody has really looked at higher quality protein sources or other food sources for pet tropicals.

I would not expect there to be large differences between different types of fish meals but krill brings in some chitin which will test as protein but not be as digestible as straight fish meal, but it’s cheaper and a little chitin isn’t a bad thing, necessarily.  Think of it like the lettuce of the meat based fish food ingredients, it helps keep “things” moving.  Plant based proteins or carbs are more likely to have a more significant difference in effects on different species since some fish are adapted to digest plants and some aren’t.

Studies are definitely indicated, so if someone wants to fund a couple million bucks towards learning more about pet tropical fish nutritional needs, I’ll be glad to help!  I am not a nutritionist, but I know people, and I know people that know people.  😆 

"Fish nutrition" in aquaculture drives me nuts. The failed gains from organ failure deaths at the sturgeon farm where I work would pay for actual health and nutrition research many times over. But all anyone cares about is weight gain.

Edited March 20, 2022 by modified lung

[Odd Duck]

On 3/19/2022 at 7:07 PM, modified lung said:

Thanks for the detailed answer. That makes a lot of sense. Isn't chitin a carbohydrate though? Or is it similar enough to protein that it can be listed as a protein?

"Fish nutrition" in aquaculture drives me nuts. The failed gains from organ failure deaths at the sturgeon farm where I work would pay for actual health and nutrition research many times over. But all anyone cares about is weight gain.

You are correct.  But chitin is a weird thing.  It is technically a fibrous polysaccharide but it’s the major component of exoskeleton of arthropods (and fungi) but I believe it’s usually not purified enough to be pure polysaccharide in most foods and it often carries a fair amount of protein with it.  So it technically isn’t a protein, but fish foods that have it also have proteins that hitchhike in with the chitin but are not particularly bioavailable.

I should have been more clear but I felt I was already likely running well past what most people are interested in reading.  There is a supplement for pets with kidney disease that is essentially purified chitin and it binds the protein in the gut to keep the pet from absorbing as much protein as they otherwise would.  Excess protein is an issue for kidney patients, too much of a diversion from topic to go into here.  But I should have explained that the chitin makes it less available vs “making it seem like higher protein” even if the labels reads “X” amount of protein.

Yes, exactly on the weight gain vs organ failure.

That’s exactly the difference between studies done on food fish vs our pets.

[modified lung]

On 3/19/2022 at 5:38 PM, Odd Duck said:

You are correct.  But chitin is a weird thing.  It is technically a fibrous polysaccharide but it’s the major component of exoskeleton of arthropods (and fungi) but I believe it’s usually not purified enough to be pure polysaccharide in most foods and it often carries a fair amount of protein with it.  So it technically isn’t a protein, but fish foods that have it also have proteins that hitchhike in with the chitin but are not particularly bioavailable.

I should have been more clear but I felt I was already likely running well past what most people are interested in reading.  There is a supplement for pets with kidney disease that is essentially purified chitin and it binds the protein in the gut to keep the pet from absorbing as much protein as they otherwise would.  Excess protein is an issue for kidney patients, too much of a diversion from topic to go into here.  But I should have explained that the chitin makes it less available vs “making it seem like higher protein” even if the labels reads “X” amount of protein.

Yes, exactly on the weight gain vs organ failure.

That’s exactly the difference between studies done on food fish vs our pets.

Got it. I've been starting to raise some non-traditional live foods. I'm trying to get more into fish nutrition so I'm not wasting effort on something pointless. Reading stuff like this makes it much easier to find research avenues so feel free to write all the essays you want. 

[Odd Duck]

On 3/19/2022 at 8:58 PM, modified lung said:

Got it. I've been starting to raise some non-traditional live foods. I'm trying to get more into fish nutrition so I'm not wasting effort on something pointless. Reading stuff like this makes it much easier to find research avenues so feel free to write all the essays you want. 

What are you raising?

[modified lung]

On 3/19/2022 at 7:00 PM, Odd Duck said:

What are you raising?

Right now Simocephalus vetulus and Ceriodaphnia dubia from the same family as daphnia. Bosmina longirostrus from the some order as daphnia. Branchionus rubens, freshwater rotifer. And I found a freshwater amphipod I haven't identified that's twice the size of the normal scud.

The Bosmina are especially promising. They are smaller and have a higher %protein and lower %carbohydrate than Moina.

[Odd Duck]

On 3/19/2022 at 9:35 PM, modified lung said:

Right now Simocephalus vetulus and Ceriodaphnia dubia from the same family as daphnia. Bosmina longirostrus from the some order as daphnia. Branchionus rubens, freshwater rotifer. And I found a freshwater amphipod I haven't identified that's twice the size of the normal scud.

The Bosmina are especially promising. They are smaller and have a higher %protein and lower %carbohydrate than Moina.

Very interesting!  Where did you find cultures?  Did you find them local to you and speciate them?  How did you find nutritional data on them?

[modified lung]

On 3/19/2022 at 9:19 PM, Odd Duck said:

Very interesting!  Where did you find cultures?  Did you find them local to you and speciate them?  How did you find nutritional data on them?

I found them all locally in pools, slow streams, and rice farms. If I can't ID them myself, I ask around. I found nutritional info by digging through papers and books and following citations. 

[Odd Duck]

On 3/20/2022 at 12:58 AM, modified lung said:

I found them all locally in pools, slow streams, and rice farms. If I can't ID them myself, I ask around. I found nutritional info by digging through papers and books and following citations. 

ORD, but very cool.