Free fish food

Wow. I've never heard that...and I was not able to catch Anthony's talk yet. Looking forward to seeing it online. I wonder if the same holds true for nori? I assume it only holds true for dry foods, right?

And I never saw you at Fall Fest. Not sure how I missed you. Would have liked to have said hi and caught up on the progress of your new tank.

--AJ

 

Well I sure am glad I have two large containers of new life spectrum marine pellets.

Looking forward to hearing his insights on this. I am a little surprised that dry pellet food falls into this category. I wonder how long it was on the shelf before I bought it?

Dammit.

 

Posted By PotRoast on 11/10/2010 01:19 PM
Dammit.
+1

 

Yeah I've known that for years, it's a real hot topic in aquaculture where of course nutrition is king, especially when you're going to be feeding those fish to humans later down the road.

Yes NORI will also precipitate valuable vitamins and minerals, however, a key component of NORI is the starch and cellulose (storage & structural polysaccharides) that due to their beta 1-4 glucosidic linkages are indigestible (at least by eukaryotes, some animals have ruminant digestive systems that utilize bacterial cultures to break down these bonds). This roughage is mainly necessary to prevent intestinal impacting for tangs and other animals that get a fair amount of roughage in their natural diet.

So even though your NORI is possibly "expired" it still contains some useful components. However, we need to ensure that we are providing the essential vitamins to our animals that we would normally get from fresh vegetable products (yes I know kelp is a macro algae not a vegetable). This includes vitamins A, C, E, and K. In short; retinol (eyes), collagen (connective tissue), antioxidant, and coagulation respectively. Of course this isn't all of the essential vitamins required for good health and a well functioning metabolisim, and for the most part vitamins play a role as co-enzymes in both cyclical, catabolic, and anabolic pathways.

Of course it's these pellet, flake, and natural feeds (mysis, krill, rotifer etc.) that provide the 3 essential; protien, carbs, and lipids for our fish. That's of course why vitamin supplements and fatty acid supplements like Selcon are such a great addition to our feeding regiments.
These feeds are produced from small, short lived pelagic fish like anchovies, capelin, pilchard, sardines, etc. However there is a HUGE demand for fish meal and fish oil from these sources and modern feeds (even in aquaculture) are incorporating increasing amounts of corn and soybean oil proteins. Since in the grand scheme of things we as hobbyists are the low men on the totem poll, we aren't typically getting the HIGHEST quality foods, despite manufacturer claims, but rather we are getting a large proportion of processing by-products such as trimmings rejects and higher proportions of bone (as compared to aquaculture grade feeds). This is by-and-large adequate for our fish, and a nessesary use of materials that would otherwise go to waste, and really shouldn't (but that's a whole other story). The caveat to this is that this alters the composition of the meal by decreasing over all protein content (important for growth, which isn't so much a concern for us) but consequently increasing the ash (bone) content. This can be a problem because ehigh calcium and phosphorus from bone can result in gastro abnormalities in fish from the formation of insoluble calcium phosphates, that are formed when food leaves the acidic stomach and enters the intestinal environment (where typically the pH is closer to neutral). The result is complex salts that bind cations, especially zinc. Zinc defficiency can lead to poor bone formation or inhibits it all together, and causes cataracts in some species. (Hardy, Ronald W. aquaculture magazine jan-feb 2008 vol. 34 no.1.)

Furthermore, I would assess that long term success is dictated by the attention to these nutritional details that we attend for our finned friends, and that sudden, mysterious death or disease outbreak in long lived fish is probably related to nutritional deficiency 90%-ish of the time. Many of us are famiiliar with head and lateral line erosion, and working @ petland for 6 years I have seen a few HORRIBLE HORRIBLE looking specimens affected by this condition, and although the jury is still out (and has been for decades now) on what causes and cures this condition, it would not suprise me to learn that it is infact linked to nutritional deffeciency. My theory on this condition revolves around the bio-oxidation of fatty acids and the formation of neuronal myelin sheaths.

Anyways, I hope this information is useful to the community!

Cya,
Andy Long

 

This is a huge topic in the industry. Shelf life is somewhat extended when a food is unopened because it doesn't have oxygen to react with (oxygen of course has a high electron affinity and is typically the agent liberating vitamins from their solubility in the flake or pellet product.) Additionally sunlight, uv irradiation, even at really super low levels will oxidize components that constitute fish feeds and reduce the solubility of necessary vitamins and minerals. Some just plainly evaporate! molecule by molecule of course.
That's why Spectrum has gained some opposition, because yeah, its a great food, but they use clear containers!!! I use specturm as well, buy small, if the store you're buying from is good about rotating their food (petland is) grab the food from the back, and refrigerate it.

 

and clean your skimmers in the mornings

 

Yeah, really this was the main thing I took away, something I think I knew intuitively but an awakening suggestion. The other thing, was the suggestion of adding Stress Coat or NOVaqua to the skimmer chamber, sheer genious! what better way to speed up break in after cleaning than to add non polar solvents to bind with incoming organics!

 

Wow...good stuff...really looking forward to watching the vids. No pressure Jeremy, no pressure. ;-)

--AJ

 

I might be uploading them tonight, just depends on the workload....

 

I understand you're busy...take the time that you need to do them right. I'm anxiously awaiting their release! Thanks for all the time and effort you put into doing these vids for the club.

--AJ

 

Fawn I could take some of that food off your hands but won't be your way for a week. Let me know if you still have it then.
-Bill