My review of IO gel brine food

I was at my LFS the other day and they gave me a free pack of the Instant Ocean Brine Shrimp Gel food. Being free, I decided to give it a try. Normally I feed frozen San Francisco Bay Brand Marine Cuisine and Formula One flakes. The individual serving size pouches and the non-refrigeration are both nice about this product. However, when you squeeze it into your tank, it globs up into these weird looking blobs that my fish were very curious/cautious about. It took them a little while before they actual tried it. To be honest, I didn't notice them liking it anymore than my regular frozen food. I think it has to do with the size of the globs that form, too big for them normally. For larger fish, I don't see this being a problem, but my clown and firefish don't appreciate it. In the end, I'll hold onto the food because it will be great for when I'm not here to feed and I can just tell someone else to squeeze a packet in rather than having to thaw out frozen food. I'm also more of a target feeding person which is why I prefer frozen due to it's ease of being thawed out, adding supplements and then drawing up into a syringe to target feed. Here are some pics and a video of me feeding it, as well as a comparison of the nutritional values of the two foods (IO gel and SF Bay Marine Cuisine).





IO nutritional analysis:


San Francisco Bay Brand Marine Cuisine nutritional analysis:


Feeding video:

 

Just to let you know, the gel food is meant to be broken up as you're squeezing it into the tank, so you can make different sizes of food as you're feeding. Try shaking your hand faster or slower as you squeeze to do that.

 

Yeah, but the problem with that for me is the amount of food that it puts in the water at once. Having only two fish, I add very little food at a time.

 

I had the same experience, having a small number of little fish. I could see this product working well for someone who has a lot of fish to feed.