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How long does flake food maintain its nutrition after being put in the tank?
The reason I'm asking is I am trying to get my 40 day old fry started on it.
I grind the flakes up real fine and put them under water so that they sink to the bottom.
It takes them around 4 hours or so to finish and I'm wondering if by that time they are useless
as food.
BTW they kill the fdbws'
Thank you
Jay
I donno for sure but it is logical that if they still eat it it must be good for them,
Yeah right, like Twinkies in front of my 2 grandsons, 8 and 6 years old,
compared to carrot sticks. LOL
Jay
Have you tried a different flake I like NLS optimum and my fish readially eat not much even makes it to the bottom
Jeanne
Not sure how long the nutrients lasts. On the cantainer it generally says feed as much as fish will consume in 3-4 minutes. Not sure if that's why is says that but most of my fish take much longer to consume flakes.
I gave up feeding flakes. I feel like the 3-4 min instruction is mostly for keeping the water clean. When I tried flakes, it really got messy.
Flake food sitting in the water for a few hours is not going to be a problem. The bigger issue is the age on flake food when you get it. Vitamins will oxidize in 6-9 months, so getting fresh flakes is important if that’s their main diet. The best approach is feeding a variety of foods. Frozen food is a real advantage here.
What kind of frozen food?Quote:
Originally Posted by Willie
I believe your much better off with freeze dried foods over frozen ,with frozen your buying mostly water, with freeze dried your getting all food you can rehydrate the freeze dried in hot water which softens the food and allows it to sink,some that I use are blackworms,mysis shrimp, plankton, just to list a few
Jeanne
It's definitely worthwhile to look at the nutritional content of frozen foods for comparison shopping. For example, there is mysis with 10% protein content vs ones with 50% protein content. I buy the latter.
As for value, frozen food is a lot cheaper than freeze dried food. Imagine starting with 1 LB of food, freeze dry it, and you end up with < 1/2 LB of food. Of course you'll have to charge more.
Willie
Any food that fish like bacteria are also going to like. The FDA recommends that food be left out no more than 2 hours prior to either refrigerating or tossing. Also the warmer it is the faster the bacteria proliferate. Cannot imagine that being surrounded by water makes this a slower process in an aquarium, so I would not go beyond 2 hours and arguably a one hour limit makes more sense.