Aquatic Ramblings' New Life Spectrum Betta Formula Review
A great review on Fish Ramblings, a self-described Canadian Fish Geek…
Article Excerpt:
Since getting the girls I have been going through betta food at a much faster rate then before so I needed to get some more food. I had never tried any New Life Spectrum foods before and I know they make good foods so I decided to try their betta food. After a couple of feedings using this food, I have only one complaint.
For $10 CAD you get 1.76oz, which compared to Hikari Betta Bio-Gold ($13 CAD for 0.70oz) is defiantly a very good price. It certainly trumps the Betta Bio-Gold in the packaging department, the sturdy plastic screw-on lid is the best packaging of any fish food I have tried so far. The plastic dispenser thing that the 0.09oz size package of Betta Bio-Gold is sold in looks cool but I gave up on it very quickly and transferred the product to a jar. This packaging easy to use and store, so I like it.
As far as ingredients go, New Life Spectrum’s foods have the best ingredients of any food I have looked at.
Whole Antarctic krill meal, whole fish meal, whole wheat flour, Ulva Seaweed, Chlorella Algae, Beta Carotene, Spirullna, Garlic, alfalfa, mollusk, Omega- 3, fruit and vegetable extract (spinach, red and green cabbage, pea, broccoli, zucchini, tomato, red bell pepper, kiwi, apricot, pear, mango, apple, papaya, peach), vitamin a acetate, Vitamin D supplement, Vitamin E supplement, Vitamin B12 supplement, Niacin, Folic Acid, Biotin, Thiamine, Riboflavin Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Calcium Pantothenate, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphasephate (Stable C), Choline Chloride, Ethylenediamine Dihydroiodide, Cobalt Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Manganese Sulfate.
Whole krill meal and spriulina are both excellent protein sources. Krill shells are very high in astaxanthin, which is the most common and best colour-enhancing compound. Beta-carotenes and Spirulina and also both good colour enhancers. Garlic is known to have anti-parasitic properties and boost the immune system and is sometimes added to marine foods for that reason, but New Life Spectrum is the only food I know of that includes it in their freshwater formulas. Does garlic actually help to prevent parasites in your fish? Who knows, but it can’t hurt.
One of the really notable things about the ingredients list of this food is what it doesn’t contain. Both the preservative Ethoxyquin and added vitamin K are ingredients commonly found in fish foods that according to www.oscarfish.comare ingredients which are harmful and should be avoided if at all possible. Read more about those ingredients here.
Side note: www.oscarfish.com has the most researched and in-depth fish food reviews I have seen. Check them out if you’re at all interested.
The one complaint about this food that I had however is the pellet size. It’s hardly a complain, I just find the pellets a tad too large. It takes the fish a bit longer to eat each one. However, this probably isn’t even an issue for the fish and just my personal preference…