Is Emerald Entrée a "complete" food?. . . if no, what is a "complete" food my fish will actually eat?

[MoshJosh]

This is sort of my "staple" food, fish seem to enjoy it and I like that it has shrimp and algae in it. . . I do mix it with other foods, namely Marine Cuisine and Coral Cuisine (both are also frozen foods from the same company), however, the fish don't seem to like the Marine Cuisine (I have seen them spit it out) and the Coral Cuisine I just add to supplement the corals. . .

So can my fish survive and thrive if only eating Emerald Entree?

Emerald Entree Frozen Fish Food

Share This Page: Fish Food - Frozen Natural Formulated Diets Emerald EntrÉe™ A Nutritious Omnivorous Formula For All Fresh & Salt Omnivores Emerald Entr ...

sfbb.com

If not, what is a "complete" food that fish actually like. I have clowns and damsels.

Also, by complete I mean something they could survive on if it were their only source of nutrition.

 

[natashakay.]

Make your own food! Much cheaper lasts way longer and way healthier lol

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

I recommended a varied diet, don't feed just one thing

 

[exnisstech]

Shrimp, clams, muscles, fish, anything on sale at the sea-food counter, nori, vitachem, and selcon in a food processor then frozen. PE mysys is fed seperate and has always been my go to if I run out of the homemade mix. Sheets of nori as well for alage grazers.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Shrimp, clams, muscles, fish, anything on sale at the sea-food counter, nori, vitachem, and selcon in a food processor then frozen. PE mysys is fed seperate and has always been my go to if I run out of the homemade mix. Sheets of nori as well for alage grazers.

What type of fish do you prefer?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

This is sort of my "staple" food, fish seem to enjoy it and I like that it has shrimp and algae in it. . . I do mix it with other foods, namely Marine Cuisine and Coral Cuisine (both are also frozen foods from the same company), however, the fish don't seem to like the Marine Cuisine (I have seen them spit it out) and the Coral Cuisine I just add to supplement the corals. . .

So can my fish survive and thrive if only eating Emerald Entree?

Emerald Entree Frozen Fish Food

Share This Page: Fish Food - Frozen Natural Formulated Diets Emerald EntrÉe™ A Nutritious Omnivorous Formula For All Fresh & Salt Omnivores Emerald Entr ...

sfbb.com

If not, what is a "complete" food that fish actually like. I have clowns and damsels.

Also, by complete I mean something they could survive on if it were their only source of nutrition.

My main concern with Emerald Entree is that it's super low in fat (~5.6% fat by dry weight), and you actually want a decent amount of fat in the diet for optimal fish health. My next concern is that the ingredients are not my favorite (they're not bad, but, I'd personally like fewer land veggies and more sea veggies). For example, while it contains spinach, romaine lettuce, and red-leaf lettuce, it actually only contains one species of green (micro)algae (Spirulina). Personally, I'd expect better health in herbivorous fish with the addition of at least one other algae, preferably two (Ulva is great for a green algae feed; Gracilaria and Halymenia are great red algae feeds).

From what I’ve seen, for the best health in fish, you want a variety of good ingredients, high protein (50%+ minimum by dry weight, preferably closer to 60%+), and a moderate amount of fat (10-15% by dry weight, preferably closer to 13 or 14%).

Unfortunately, foods that have good amounts of protein and fat rarely contain good amounts of algae (algae isn't really high in protein or fat, so adding a significant amount to the meaty feeds really lowers the percent totals). Personally, for best health, I would take a really high quality meaty feed and add a good variety of algae to supplement it/add an algae heavy feed to supplement it to get a good balance for any herbivores in the tank.

Personally, my suggested feeds would be as follows (I apologize, I haven't looked into frozen algae-heavy feeds enough to have one that I would suggest at this point; I'll have to remedy that):
Frozen (Meaty) - LRS Reef Frenzy, Hikari Mega Marine, then Rod's Original.

LRS has a higher protein content while Rod’s has higher fat (~59% protein and ~13% fat for LRS Reef Frenzy, ~53% protein and ~15% fat for Rod’s Original).

As a side note here, I'm actually quite impressed by Hikari's Mega Marine line there; I haven't looked at that line in depth before, but it says it has a 75% dry protein content and - depending on the specific blend in the line (regular, angel, and algae) - a 10-15% dry fat content with solid/good ingredients. The only thing that I see that I wish they had in the mix is some kind of fish (LRS Reef Frenzy has Ocean Perch and Whitefish, for example) and, for the algae blend, some kind of bivalve or two. For comparison, LRS Reef Frenzy - according to their lab test results on their site - has 59.1% dry protein and 12.7% dry fat.

Pellets (Meaty) - Otohime, then TDO Chromaboost.
Pellets (Algal) - NLS Marine Fish Pellets (has 8 types of algae and one terrestrial plant).

The best pellet feeds I know at present are good, but not as quite good as the frozen feeds: TDO Chromaboost, Otohime, and NLS pellets are the best I've seen (checking the guaranteed analyses and ingredients of each today, Otohime seems slightly better than TDO, but both Otohime and TDO offer a good amount of protein and fat with plenty of meaty ingredients; NLS offers a good variety of algae). If I were to feed pellets, I'd supplement any NLS pellet feedings with some higher protein and higher fat meaty foods (like mysis shrimp for protein and something like blackworms for fat) and some nori (the nori just to be safe), and I'd definitely supplement Otohime and TDO with nori too (to my knowledge, these wouldn't need a higher protein/fat supplement, but I'd probably still feed some mysis shrimp and blackworms on occasion).

For anyone curious about dry weight info (dry matter basis), see my quote:

With regards to the moisture and protein content, when looking at foods for pets (fish, cats, dogs, etc.), it's a good idea to look at the dry matter basis of the guaranteed analysis. To state it simply, frozen foods and wet foods show super low protein and fat contents on their guaranteed analysis labels when compared to dry foods - this isn't because they're lower quality or less healthy, it's just that they have more moisture in the mix. To compare apples to apples protein and fat of frozen/wet vs dry foods, you take the dry matter basis of each factor (protein on its own and fat on its own once you've accounted for moisture).

For example, San Francisco Bay Brand Frozen Spirulina Brine Shrimp lists the following guaranteed analysis:
Crude Protein (Min): 3.7%
Crude Fat (Min): 1.2%
Crude Fiber (Max): 1.6%
Moisture (Max): 94.8%
Ash (Max): 0.2%
Phosphorus (Min): 0.1%

Looks very not nutritious. But, when you account for the moisture by taking the dry matter basis, you realize that that 3.7% protein is 3.7 out of 5.2 (the actual amount of food in the pack; i.e. the percent of the food that isn't moisture like the water used to hold the frozen food together or to keep the meat in the cat food can fresh). So, looking at the dry matter basis, 3.7/5.2 = 0.71 (rounded for simplicity's sake) - times this by 100 to get the percentage and you get a dry matter basis of 71% Crude Protein content. So, while it looks unhealthy at first glance, when you look at just the food in the food packet and not the moisture plus the food, you find out that the food is actually fairly healthy.

Because of this, a lot of frozen/wet pet foods look worthless at first glance, but some of them are actually top of the line foods when compared to dry foods this way. The only real downside of frozen/wet foods is that - because of the high moisture content - you might not always be getting as much food pound for pound as buying dry (i.e. one lb of dry food is going to have a lot more actual food in the container than one lb of frozen/wet food because of the lower moisture content). This really just means that frozen/wet foods are generally more expensive.

TLDR: Frozen/wet pet foods look unhealthy, but, accounting for moisture, they're usually high quality. They're just expensive too.

TLDR: I'd feed a good meaty food (like LRS Reef Frenzy, Hikari Mega Marine, or Rod's Original) and supplement it with some algae (like Nori and/or NLS Marine Fish Pellets) - the more algae species used to supplement, the better.

 

[exnisstech]

What type of fish do you prefer?

I like to use salmon but it's usually too expensive. I've used tilapia and last time cod. I usually just buy items based on whats on sale. It's a little different everytime I make a batch. Fish haven't complained and they are fat and healthy.