Food, which brand?

[riioKen]

Hi, in my aquarium I have celestial pearl danio, ember tetra and otocinclus. I need food for them. Where I live I can find new life spectrum and hikari (regular small fish 0.5mm or thera A+ or probiotix), for the otocinclus I was thinking about algae max and (or) new life spectrum algae gel. Which one should I get? Can you make me a list of every food that I need? I mean would be great and my fishes will thank you. 

[Mmiller2001]

All of those are solid choices. I have 3 different brands so I can rotate them for a mixed diet. I also feed frozen foods. Just give them a good mix/ rotation.

[Lennie]

I've used small fish community formula (0.5mm), algaemax and Thera A+ from that list. All fish I have loved Small fish formula and thera a+.

But I would go with small community fish formula one instead. Bcoz @Odd Duck once mentioned something related to garlic not being studied well enough for fish, so for a daily food, feeding increased garlic content in the food is maybe not the best idea then.

 

None of my fish, including otos, liked algaemax wafers. Only my snails did really. However I will try the pellet version for my guppy tanks in the future. Overall it is a nice food. But a food is good, if it has good ingredients and if fish actually eat it. In my experience, it being good wasn't enough.

Never tried the gel food. But NLS is great in general and if I were to choose one food forever, I would go for it. I haven't seen any fish of mine not liking it.

 

I still crush 0.5mm pellets for my guppies and endlers tho. I think it would be still nice for you to crush them too as the fish you mentioned are small in size. Fish really like to eat smaller food pieces in my experience.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Lennie

[riioKen]

On 6/7/2023 at 9:23 PM, Lennie said:

small fish community formula

Ok, you suggest the regular one, not the Thera A+ which have garlic and the probiotix which is based on the Thera A+ plus probiotic. 

 

About otocinclus, I'm using Tetra pleco pellets, which I didn't know that tetra was a cheap brand. Some eats the pellets but some not. That's why I was evaluating both NLS pellets and algae gel.

On 6/7/2023 at 9:22 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

I have 3 different brands so I can rotate them for a mixed diet

Do you think should I add Hikari micro pellets in the diet?

 

On 6/7/2023 at 9:22 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

also feed frozen foods.

Which one? I'm pretty new in "high quality" fish food.

[Lennie]

On 6/7/2023 at 10:37 PM, riioKen said:

Ok, you suggest the regular one, not the Thera A+ which have garlic and the probiotix which is based on the Thera A+ plus probiotic. 

 

About otocinclus, I'm using Tetra pleco pellets, which I didn't know that tetra was a cheap brand. Some eats the pellets but some not. That's why I was evaluating both NLS pellets and algae gel.

Do you think should I add Hikari micro pellets in the diet?

 

Which one? I'm pretty new in "high quality" fish food.

For that fish size, baby brine and daphnia are good choices for frozen food. If you can hatch live baby brine, even better.

Hikari has some good foods but that one is just okay imo. Are you able to get Xtreme, repashy or Dainichi? Those are some good ones as well as New life spectrum

[Mmiller2001]

On 6/7/2023 at 1:37 PM, riioKen said:

Do you think should I add Hikari micro pellets in the diet?

Great for small mouth fish. I use it daily.

[RedPots]

Greenhorn 2 cents : 
I’ve been leaning on ACO Easy Fry Food as my daily go to for Ember Tetras. Next step up in my quiver is Bug Bites tropical - which just looks like boulders falling down on these little guys. 
They do OK with finely chopped frozen foods - but a lot gets missed on the way down. 
Easy Fry is like a powder that floats and Slowly sinks. I’ll usually tap down a little right away and very little gets past them.

[nabokovfan87]

On 6/7/2023 at 12:11 PM, riioKen said:

for the otocinclus I was thinking about algae max and (or) new life spectrum algae gel.

That food is actually awesome for all fish you mentioned!

There is also notthfin krill pro that seems pretty great as well. Bug bites is another one.

I use the northfin cichlid veggie, couldn't find the NLS here and I feed the Xtreme flake mix.

[riioKen]

I would like to prepare my own repashy gel, is there a recipe somewhere? In Europe isn't available. 

[Lennie]

On 6/30/2023 at 12:49 AM, riioKen said:

I would like to prepare my own repashy gel, is there a recipe somewhere? In Europe isn't available. 

Yes. Better utilize what you have in your hand tbh. Otos are never guaranteed to accept commercial foods. My pygmy cories taught them to eat commercial foods.

 

 

There are New Life Spectrum gel mix you can check.

 

 

https://www.feedspectrum.com/products/nlsmix

 

 

Also the last time I visited my LFS, I saw that they are carrying Tropical's gel food mix. There were carnivore, omnivore and herbivore versions.

 

I haven't tried any of them yet. But If you are also from EU, maybe you can find these instead of Repashy as they were all available to me

Edited June 29, 2023 by Lennie

[Val]

On 6/7/2023 at 4:23 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

Great for small mouth fish. I use it daily.

I too love the Hikari micro pellets.  I'm about to set up a new tank featuring checker barbs, and that will be my staple.

[nabokovfan87]

On 6/29/2023 at 2:49 PM, riioKen said:

I would like to prepare my own repashy gel, is there a recipe somewhere? In Europe isn't available. 

Yes there is a few online.  A lot of people use a certain type of powder to get the food to gel for them and mix whatever they wish.