Dry foods to me is little more than convenience food, we are obsessed with convenience and time saving. We are told how great these dry foods are for our fish with long lists of ingredients inc E numbers and by who? Yep the people who sell them. I once asked my Copperband which E numbers it would like for dinner and it looked at me as if I was talking a foreign language. It just looked and said it would rather eat a McDonald's. Some of my fish will eat dry food it's true but then some people will ear McDonald's that's true also and they don't care it's not real food or if it's good for them they just look forward to a heart attack and being over weight which my fish don't seem to get on the wholesome home made foods I feed. No sickness no parasitic infections just long lives spawning and doing what fish should do. I feed 4 times a day on cheap easily made natural food which isn't so inconvenient. I also culture live foods, brine shrimp and pods. I do use commercial frozen foods simply because I can't culture or buy them fresh. We are now a generation or two of a throw away culture so throw away that dried food and give you fish what it really needs good wholesome homemade food.I hate to say this but there really is no "quality" dry food.
OK, I said it but I have to explain before people come here and put burning bags of dead fish on my porch.
I know about dry foods and was here when they invented the stuff. I also know about freeze dried foods and ate it in Viet Nam.
I saw those foods go through all the tests etc. It will definitely keep fish alive, maybe even forever but dry foods, no mater what it says on the label is sterilized food.
Any food that is sterilized can be kept for many months or years without refrigeration, thats why they invented dry foods. Not for fish health, but for convenience.
Thats also why they invented white flour, it needs no refrigeration so it is cheap to store and can be stored in the same place we store bicycle rims and 8 track tape players.
Think about this for a minute. All fish in the sea eat live foods, not only because they can't get dry food, but because dry food does not have living bacteria in it that all fish need to run their immune system.
Certainly if you read the list of things on dry foods you will see all this nutritious stuff but you will also see things you can't recognize which is preservatives.
Those are there because as a dry food that needs no refrigeration anything healthy in it will go bad.
Like Duh
If there are no preservatives, there is also nothing healthy in a state that will remain healthy when a fish eats it.
Would you feed your kids dry oatmeal or white flour? How about if you add a bunch of dry vitamins and minerals? I wouldn't.
Fish, and us run on bacteria. We are part bacteria and need influxes of living bacteria, good and bad to have any sort of immune system.
So if you really feel the need to feed your fish "quality" dry food at least a few times a week add something with living bacteria in it.
LRS food is great and I use it every day. Larry the owner even eats it himself, but not the ones with the blackworms unless he puts horseradish on it first.
I also use living worms and clams (although I know Larry adds a lot of clams, it's just me.
Virtually all of my paired fish constantly spawn, I never have to quarantine, never lose a fish to disease and unless they jump out, they only die of old age or getting bit in half by a tuna or something with teeth.
My tank is almost fifty years old and I have tried every type of fish. I also read the disease forum and never have to go on that which is why I feed normal, natural food with living bacteria and parasites in it in the liquid state it is supposed to be in.
One big reason we can not yet send astronauts on long space voyages (besides the price of gas and hostile aliens) is because we can't provide them with a variety of different living bacteria with the diseases included so they can stay immune to them as all healthy humans are.
I didn't make that up and didn't get it from Taylor Swift. I have posted all about it in the past.
Good luck, Happy New Year and have a great day.
Now I will go and have some worms for breakfast. ;Drool
