Flake vs. frozen

Any advantages to feeding flake/pellet food besides price? What is best for fish health?

 

Variety. Pellets and flakes can be high quality, but the real key to success is to vary what you feed and offer a broad approach to nutrition.

 

The nutrition in flake and pellet food starts going down the second you open it the very first time. If you store it in the freezer (to keep it away from moisture) it will maintain some of those vitamins a little longer. However, if your jar is more than 3 months old you are basically only giving your fish fiber. You would need to be soaking them in both vitamin a HUFA sources.

 

Dang, I didn't realized it was this fast. I need to put less food in my auto feeders and refill once a week then!! I've put enough food in there for a couple months before.

I auto feed pellets 4 times daily and add a mix that could include (i change it daily) nori, rods veggie, oyster feast, hikari mysis, h20 50/50 plus with spirulina and add selcon to it as well.

 

They actually need fiber. Since this is not the only food you are feeding, you are doing fine because your other foods have a lot of vitamins and HUFA in them.

 

I have always fed a variety of frozen foods with some fresh seafood mixed in. Most foods are fortified with vitamins, but had heard how some, like vitamin C, can degrade going through the freezing and thawing process.

 

I've heard flake foods can spike phosphate levels higher than frozen foods.. IME I think over feeding any type of food, flake or froze, is the overwhelming reason. I'd say mixed diet is the best bet like already mentioned. This link might be a little off topic but really helped me decide with my nutrition plan. I was more worried about reducing phosphates though. http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry

 

Vitamin C is HIGHLY unstable. It doesn't like light, it doesn't like air (humidity), it doesn't like heat.

It doesn't like the freezing/thawing process. That's why one wants it thawed only once. When I sell frozen food, the package is wrapped in newspaper and taped up so it goes from freezer at the store to freezer at the customer's house still in a frozen state. (There's other reasons why this is important but I'm only talking about Vitamin C here).

 

When ever I'm in a hurry I feed pellets then any other time a feed a large variety of frozen food at least 3 times a week and live brine once every two weeks I was always told variety is key and my fish are all fat, colorful, and happy lol

 

This is a survey I conducted that has gotten a ton of results so you can see how others feed.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/general-reef-topics/feeding-survey-what-do-you-feed-117529.html