What Makes Superior Fish Food?
There are unknowns in regards to tropical fish nutrition, particularly if you consider the thousands of varieties of ornamental species kept in captivity. Yet when it comes to commercial diets, we believe the best overall approach is to use a high-quality food that satisfies the crude requirements of all species.
The requirement for a high-quality food is particularly true of marine fish. Freshwater fish on a mediocre diet may simply look mediocre and act lethargic. But most will survive. For marine fish, a nutritionally complete and properly balanced diet is a matter of survival. This is particularly true of demanding species like Surgeonfish, Angelfish, etc.
Here are some basic guidelines for choosing a superior fish food:
Palatability. Fish are governed by olfactory senses (aka smell) and to a lesser extent taste. Of course, unless the fish is attracted to the food, no matter how nutritionally superior it may be, it’s useless.
Food’s energy input has to exceed energy output. Output takes the form of movement and metabolic functions. This balance is especially important in marine fish. For some, despite eating in the aquarium, waste away until death. A nutrient packed food can help counteract this and produce both substantial growth rates and optimum health.
Digestibility. As mentioned previously, the protein used must be easily digested and absorbed by herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. Fish don’t have access to an abundant food source in our miniscule aquarium environments.
This is one reason many “natural” sources like mysis or brine shrimp are inferior to high-nutrition formulas: their nutrient density is attuned for the fish being able to forage constantly, and their abundance within the oceanic environment — an environment very unlike an aquarium. Engineered nutrition solutions are designed for an environment where sheer quantity of food is limited, as is living space.
Whatever food you feed, it must provide ample daily nutritional requirements for the fish to thrive. Superior food generally produces less waste, hence less pollution in your aquarium.
Fat content should ideally be below 10% to avoid fatty liver disease, except in the case of juvenile fish — which require fat as an immediate energy source in order to spare the much-needed protein for building muscle.
Longevity. Choose a food that can maintain health for years, not months. We have maintained numerous Angelfish, Surgeonfish, Butterfly Fish, etc., for over 10 years. How long do fish live if their nutritional needs are met? In many cases it could be 20+ years (although few hobbyists have kept the aforementioned species of fish alive for such long periods of time). Yet in some cases, one or two years would unfortunately be considered a success. We’re not talking about Damsels, Clownfish, Triggerfish, or other species that are fairly easy to keep in captivity, but marine species that are considered ultra-delicate by most hobbyists.
Less Waste. Superior food produces less waste. This equals less pollution in your aquarium. Excess undigested protein, fiber, and minerals (ash) expel through the gills and feces. This introduces phosphate, ammonia, and nitrogen compounds. It’s also why kelp, spirulina, grain and difficult-to-digest proteins should be kept at a reasonable percentage.
It’s a common belief that regardless of the formula, it’s best to add more Kelp, vegetable matter or spirulina into their fish’s diet, unknowingly adding more pollution to their aquarium. Fish can’t utilize the additional mineral (ash) and fiber from these materials. A quality food will contain ample vegetable matter and minerals.
Color Enhancement. A high quality fish food should be able to bring out the wide spectrum of natural colors in a fish (not just red). Likewise, the source of these color enhancing ingredients should be natural — in many cases derived from the ingredients (like krill, spirulina, marigold, and red pepper) themselves. Under no circumstances should the colorants be derived from added hormones.
The Solution
And here’s the part where we have to say it: New Life Spectrum® fish food and aquarium nutrition products best fit all the criteria of a superior aquarium diet. This recommendation may seem entirely predictable for this article — and even self-serving. This perception is understandable and a healthy consumer skepticism. But we feel it would be irresponsible to not inform hobbyists about the best product available simply due to a fear of appearing to have commercial motives.
It helps to understand how Spectrum was born. By 1996, New Life had been a successful wholesale commercial fish breeder for over 20 years — as well as publishing two aquarium books that were considered standards in the hobby. In 1996, a third book, Marine Aquarium Companion, was released. In it, we took an uncompromising stance when evaluating what fish were survivable in marine aquariums of the day. This didn’t do it any favors in the pet shops trying to sell these fish! Yet we made a conscious decision to place the need for real information about fish mortality above expedience.
However, seeing the number of fish designated “doomed” made us wonder if the fate of some of these fish couldn’t be helped if we applied our experience, knowledge and philosophies to creating a better food. New Life Spectrum®was born from this foundation.
Spectrum was a passion project, which has since gone on to become a prominent brand. This can be attributed to a simple fact: it has worked to enhance fish health, vitality and color… and has continued to do so for almost 20 years since it’s introduction.
We believe in marketing through education, because “an educated consumer is our best customer”. That’s the purpose of this article. The same understanding about the dietary needs of fish we share here is the knowledge that has gone into our formulas. It’s also why we feel passionately about exposing myths, marketing gimmicks and falsehoods about aquarium nutrition circulating within the hobby.
One of the ways we demonstrate our conviction is the New Life Spectrum® Guarantee.
Feed your fish Spectrum exclusively for 30 days. Your fish that eat it will experience a noticeable increase in health, vitality and color within that time. If not, send us back the unused portion and we’ll give you a full refund no questions asked. That guarantee is unique among fish food brands; we can make it because we know the quality. We know the results. Because of this, we can afford to do so.
Why exclusively? This is a question many ask when learning about the guarantee. First, you’ll get the best results by feeding Spectrum exclusively; it’s balanced nutrient dense formula contains high quality ingredients in proper balance. Supplementing dilutes their total nutrition intake.
Second, feeding Spectrum exclusively allows you to evaluate the results. Using other foods to ‘supplement’ the food, hobbyists could attribute their fish’s increased health to this varied diet — or simply not know which element is producing results. Using the single diet allows you to know exactly where the results are coming from.
Third is that when you feed multiple brands, Spectrum would be guaranteeing results with their food as well —and we simply can’t vouch for their ingredients, since we don’t know exactly what’s in them. We know what the fish is eating when they eat New Life Spectrum®. Whole Antarctic Krill, Squid and whole fish are the most easily digestible protein sources. They also have the best amino acid profile and are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. Likewise for high quality algaes (like chlorella, ulva, wakame and spirulina).
However, good ingredients cost money and result in less profit for the manufacturer. When maximizing profits collides with maximizing fish health… the bottom-line often wins. At New Life, we take pride on focusing on your aquarum’s needs. We believe profit flows naturally from producing the best possible product.
Complete Nutrition. The beauty of New Life Spectrum® is the simplicity of a single food that can provide your fish an optimal diet. This even includes much of the trace elements and vitamins that reef keepers often dose their water with to ensure these elements are biologically available. Spectrum takes the guesswork and complexity out of aquarium feeding.
An example of the benefits of simplicity is vitamins and trace elements. In order to thrive, fish need a complex of elements in correct proportions. These include: Calcium, Iodine, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Sodium, Potassium, Iron, Zinc, Manganese, Selenium, Chorine, Vitamin A, B6 & B12, C, D2 & D3, E, K2 & K3, Pantothetic Acid, Niacin, Biotin, Thiamin, Riboflavin, folic Acid, Myoinositol, Omega 3 & 6, and several Amino Acids (Arginine, Histidine, Isoleucine, Lysine, Methionine, Phenylalanine, Threonine, Trytophan, and Valine).
Used in excess, vitamins can cause hypervitaminosis in fish. Too little results in poor health. Feeding a variety of foods, can you really hope to create the right combination to give them a balanced diet? Do you honestly know what’s in your “mix” of foods?
The Results. New Life has painstakingly experimented for many years to come up with the right proportions for healthy fish. We’ve also successfully kept Parrotfish, Angelfish, Surgeonfish, Triggerfish, Butterflyfish, and even more difficult species like Moorish Idols, Rock Beauties, and Regal Angels. And of course we’ve also tested on Malawi and Tanganyikan cichlids as well as numerous species of herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore freshwater tropical fish.
All were fed exclusively with New Life Spectrum®. These fish don’t have digestive issues; even fish with ultra-sensitive digestive tracks like Tropheus moorii and Labeotropheus don’t suffer bloat when eating Spectrum. In fish fed with New Life Spectrum®, we’ve yet to encounter fish that develop lateral line disease, fin erosion or hole-in-the-head syndrome. If they will eat Spectrum, chances are they’ll thrive. The proof is in the results.
Do Your Due Diligence. Change tends to meet resistance. New concepts might not be immediately embraced by hobbyists. Ideas like feeding a varied diet has been so fixed in the minds of hobbyists by “experts” that it seems like heresy to suggest otherwise.
Yet if we had just accepted the wisdom of “experts” without doing our own investigation and experiments, New Life Spectrum® wouldn’t exist today. In developing it, we challenged many of the status-quo assumptions about how to keep fish (and other aquarium dwellers) alive and healthy. There are always new things being discovered on the frontiers of aquarium keeping.
So always try for yourself and experiment in your own aquariums. Draw your own conclusions. Chart the results. And keep in mind this quote by David E. Boruchowitz (editor of Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine): “much of the scientific wisdom today began as heresies of another time“.
This is the conclusion of the series on fish nutrition. If you would like to know more, our website is filled with information regarding the ingredients of New Life Spectrum and ongoing blogs about fish health and nutrition.