Frozen food, which brand?

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cowgirluntamed

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So...as I aquire more fish for my 55...I'm interested in getting some frozen food instead of freeze dried. I was looking in Petsmart's little freezer and saw they had Omega One brand and Sanfransico Bay brand. I'm pretty sure they both had brine shrimp and blood worms, not sure about the rest of it. If they had daphnia I would be interested in that too. They have others, but it was a quick look so I don't remember which ones for those brands.

I love the omega one tropical flakes, shrimp pellets, and algae wafers. But I don't know anything about the quality of the frozen foods.

Does anybody have any insight? There may be places online I could get different ones but seeing as it would have to arrive frozen...shipping may be pretty high so I wasn't sure about that.

Stocking is glowlight tetras, harlequin rasboras, peppered cories, a bristlenose pleco, and a blue 3 spot gourami. (Also in a 20 gallon I have black neons and guppies.) Eventually I wI'll have a tank of tiger barbs...lol.

So...any suggestions on which kind and also how often would you feed them?
 
San Franciso Bay Brand (and it's affiliate Ocean Nutrition) and OmegaSea (Omega One) are both/all reputable companies with good products.
I tend to feed frozen brine shrimp as a treat, most often following a water change/tank maintenance. I think brine shrimp gut loaded with spirulina is best.
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I also quite like Omega One Tropical Flakes, but it's $2.56/oz. and when you grow out dozens (if not 100's) of hungry fish, well it gets expensive...so along with culturing daphnia, collecting mosquito larvae (in season) and considering culturing other live foods, I'm experimenting with a blend of premium and bulk tropical flakes.

20180914100419w.jpg
 
I use Hikari frozen bloodworms and daphnia, but this is primarily because the store carries these alone. But it is one of the most reliable fish stores in my area, and I get all my foods there. I use Omega One dried foods as you probably know, but I have not seen their frozen.

Nutritional value of frozen fish foods is minimal, so it is probably more important to go with brands that are more "pure" with less chance of disease. If that matters any longer, but it used to especially with bloodworms.
 
San Franciso Bay Brand (and it's affiliate Ocean Nutrition) and OmegaSea (Omega One) are both/all reputable companies with good products.
I tend to feed frozen brine shrimp as a treat, most often following a water change/tank maintenance. I think brine shrimp gut loaded with spirulina is best.
------
I also quite like Omega One Tropical Flakes, but it's $2.56/oz. and when you grow out dozens (if not 100's) of hungry fish, well it gets expensive...so along with culturing daphnia, collecting mosquito larvae (in season) and considering culturing other live foods, I'm experimenting with a blend of premium and bulk tropical flakes.

20180914100419w.jpg

Thanks for the info!

I would definitely feed only as a treat. My staples are what I already said. I don't know if the cories eat the flakes or not I any reaches bottom, but I know everybody loves the rest! It's funny watching the tetras start to go after the flakes when they sink and then the pellets when they go by. One the flakes are done the tetras like to go for the pellets as well. So cute!

I don't plan on having that many fish...lol. at least not at this time! Maybe one day if I can have a dedicated fish room!

I use Hikari frozen bloodworms and daphnia, but this is primarily because the store carries these alone. But it is one of the most reliable fish stores in my area, and I get all my foods there. I use Omega One dried foods as you probably know, but I have not seen their frozen.

Nutritional value of frozen fish foods is minimal, so it is probably more important to go with brands that are more "pure" with less chance of disease. If that matters any longer, but it used to especially with bloodworms.

I have Hikari freeze dried daphnia and bloodworms that I feed every now and then. But unfortunately Petsmart didn't seem to have those frozen. I may look again...could have missed it! Lol.

I did just look at the website that sells it and unless I buy in bulk...I don't want to pay the $19.99 price for shipping! Lol.

So...still as a treat then if no nutritional value in the frozen foods much? Are they better than freeze dried nutrition wise though? I thought people were feeding frozen sometimes over flakes to get better nutrition? A variety of frozen that is.
 
I have to disagree with Byron and say frozen foods are nutritional. Freezing food for long periods of time can cause them to lose some nutritional value, however they don't lose much. If they did we wouldn't have so many frozen foods available to people, meat, veges, icecream (not necessarily nutritional but yummy).

Freeze dried foods are also nutritious. They use a low temperature to dry the food out and that preserves most of the nutrients.

High temperatures (boiling and cooking) will destroy vitamins in food, and the temperature can either increase or decrease the nutritional value of some foods by making them easier to digest. But for fish keeping purposes, frozen (but defrosted) and freeze dried foods and live foods are fine and contain lots of nutrients.

----------------------
Dry flake food can go off very quickly once opened. They absorb moisture readily and damp flake food can go mouldy and lose its nutritional value very quickly. You might notice when you first open a container of flake food that the flakes are hard dry and crispy and crumble up easily. After a few weeks the flakes are softer and don't crumble as easily. This is due to moisture in the air being absorbed by the flakes. Because flakes absorb moisture rapidly when exposed to the air, you should try to use all the flake food up within a few weeks. The easiest way to do this is to use small containers of food but that costs more money. Opening a container of flake food and putting most of the flake into a small plastic zip lock bag, squeezing the air out and sealing it up, will help keep the flake dry and fresh.

You can put a gel pack (moisture absorbing pack) into the flake to help keep it fresh.

Try to keep dry food away from the aquarium and out of humid environments.

Try to get a dry food that does not have cereals (wheat) in them. Fish can't digest grains and some companies add fillers (flour from grains) to bind the other ingredients or to save money. A basic flake food should contain fish, prawn and maybe other aquatic organisms.

For small fishes like tetras you should crumble the flake up so it is easier for them to eat.

----------------------
For small fish like tetras you can use newly hatched brineshrimp and culture your own food at home. Buy some dry brineshrimp eggs online and keep them sealed up in an airtight container in the freezer. Take out a small amount and hatch them while the rest of the eggs remain frozen. There is more information about culturing live foods at the following link.
http://www.fishforums.net/threads/back-to-basics-when-breeding-fish.448304/

Daphnia can be found in ponds that appear in winter and spring and can be used to start a culture at home. Or you can buy dry eggs/ cysts from Aquaculture supply stores and use them to start cultures. Rotifers can also be cultured in the same way as Daphnia and their cysts are available from Aquaculture supply stores too.

Microworms will be another good food for your tetras. There is info about culturing them at the link above.

Grindal worms can be cultured in peat or potting mix and fed on dry powdered baby cereal.

Mosquitoe larvae frequently inhabit water containers during warmer weather and these can be scooped out with a fine mesh net, rinsed and fed to the fish, or frozen for use in winter when mozzies are not around.

Aphids can be collected from roses and fed off or frozen for later use.

Midges (small flying insects) can be found in swarms around water during spring and summer. You can use a fine mesh net to catch them and put them in a plastic bag before freezing them. Then feed them to the fish.

Chirominid Midge Larvae (aka bloodworms) can be cultured in the backyard. Put a container of water outside under a tree and add a handful of non toxic leaves. Wait a month and eventually you will see small red worms about 1/2 inch long wiggling about on the bottom. They build a house out of small particles of plant or sediment and live there until they metamorphis and turn into midges.

Bloodworms have a very hard head that cannot be digested by most fish, and live bloodworms have been known to chew through the stomach wall of some fish, usually those that don't chew their food before swallowing. Because of this, you should either freeze bloodworms or remove their heads before feeding them to fish.

Some brands of frozen bloodworms can cause problems to fish. Hikari is pretty safe and I have not heard any issues about that brand. Check all frozen food for frost damage (white frost on the food) and for defrosting (food usually looks different to normal). Avoid frozen food with damaged packaging or frost damage or food that has been defrosted and refrozen.

----------------------
If you can't get frozen fish food, you can make your own. You can put newly hatched brineshrimp into ice cube containers and freeze them, then store them in an airtight container in the freezer. You can do the same with Daphnia, rotifers and mosquitoe larvae.

You can buy fresh or frozen prawn/ shrimp (raw or cooked) and keep that in the freezer. Take out one prawn and remove the head, shell and gut (thin black tube in body) and throw those bits away. Then use a pr of scissors to cut the prawn tail into small bits and offer 1 or 2 bits at a time. Feed a few bits at a time until the fish are full.

You can also use raw fish, squid, octopus, mussel meat as well as prawn. If you have a meat mincer, you can put fish, prawn, squid and other types of marine organisms into it and make a mixture. Then put that into plastic bags and spread it out into thin sheets (3-6mm thick, 1/4-1/8inch) and freeze them. When you want some food, you break a bit off and defrost it and offer a little bit at a time.

I use to run the mixture through a mincer 3 times for my fish but it depends on the mincer and the fish being fed. For tetras and other small fishes, mince it several times.

----------------------
Baby guppies make a good live food if you are that way inclined. Feed the babies really well with a good quality flake food and then feed the guppies to other fish.

Glass/ Ghost shrimp will breed in aquariums and their young make excellent fish food too.

You can feed live or frozen fish foods as often as you like and most fish do better if they get frozen foods several times a week. I use to feed my fish dry food in the morning before work. In the evening I would feed dry food followed by frozen food and then live food. If you are trying to breed fish, then feed frozen or live food every day for several weeks before you breed the fish.
 
Then use a pr of scissors to cut the prawn tail into small bits

I prefer a small grater, Take out the frozen fish or prawn or octopus and pass it over the grater once or twice letting the bits fall into a cup of aquarium water leave for a minute or 2 and feed to fish, Thats how I feed my BBG's sometimes.

stainless-steel-small-grater-matthew1389-1708-03-Matthew1389@18.jpg


Oh PS

I use Ocean Nutrition Tropical Quintet.
http://www.oceannutrition.eu/products.aspx?Product=tropical-quintet
 
Last edited:
I have to disagree with Byron and say frozen foods are nutritional. Freezing food for long periods of time can cause them to lose some nutritional value, however they don't lose much. If they did we wouldn't have so many frozen foods available to people, meat, veges, icecream (not necessarily nutritional but yummy).

Freeze dried foods are also nutritious. They use a low temperature to dry the food out and that preserves most of the nutrients.

High temperatures (boiling and cooking) will destroy vitamins in food, and the temperature can either increase or decrease the nutritional value of some foods by making them easier to digest. But for fish keeping purposes, frozen (but defrosted) and freeze dried foods and live foods are fine and contain lots of nutrients.

----------------------
Dry flake food can go off very quickly once opened. They absorb moisture readily and damp flake food can go mouldy and lose its nutritional value very quickly. You might notice when you first open a container of flake food that the flakes are hard dry and crispy and crumble up easily. After a few weeks the flakes are softer and don't crumble as easily. This is due to moisture in the air being absorbed by the flakes. Because flakes absorb moisture rapidly when exposed to the air, you should try to use all the flake food up within a few weeks. The easiest way to do this is to use small containers of food but that costs more money. Opening a container of flake food and putting most of the flake into a small plastic zip lock bag, squeezing the air out and sealing it up, will help keep the flake dry and fresh.

You can put a gel pack (moisture absorbing pack) into the flake to help keep it fresh.

Try to keep dry food away from the aquarium and out of humid environments.

Try to get a dry food that does not have cereals (wheat) in them. Fish can't digest grains and some companies add fillers (flour from grains) to bind the other ingredients or to save money. A basic flake food should contain fish, prawn and maybe other aquatic organisms.

For small fishes like tetras you should crumble the flake up so it is easier for them to eat.

----------------------
For small fish like tetras you can use newly hatched brineshrimp and culture your own food at home. Buy some dry brineshrimp eggs online and keep them sealed up in an airtight container in the freezer. Take out a small amount and hatch them while the rest of the eggs remain frozen. There is more information about culturing live foods at the following link.
http://www.fishforums.net/threads/back-to-basics-when-breeding-fish.448304/

Daphnia can be found in ponds that appear in winter and spring and can be used to start a culture at home. Or you can buy dry eggs/ cysts from Aquaculture supply stores and use them to start cultures. Rotifers can also be cultured in the same way as Daphnia and their cysts are available from Aquaculture supply stores too.

Microworms will be another good food for your tetras. There is info about culturing them at the link above.

Grindal worms can be cultured in peat or potting mix and fed on dry powdered baby cereal.

Mosquitoe larvae frequently inhabit water containers during warmer weather and these can be scooped out with a fine mesh net, rinsed and fed to the fish, or frozen for use in winter when mozzies are not around.

Aphids can be collected from roses and fed off or frozen for later use.

Midges (small flying insects) can be found in swarms around water during spring and summer. You can use a fine mesh net to catch them and put them in a plastic bag before freezing them. Then feed them to the fish.

Chirominid Midge Larvae (aka bloodworms) can be cultured in the backyard. Put a container of water outside under a tree and add a handful of non toxic leaves. Wait a month and eventually you will see small red worms about 1/2 inch long wiggling about on the bottom. They build a house out of small particles of plant or sediment and live there until they metamorphis and turn into midges.

Bloodworms have a very hard head that cannot be digested by most fish, and live bloodworms have been known to chew through the stomach wall of some fish, usually those that don't chew their food before swallowing. Because of this, you should either freeze bloodworms or remove their heads before feeding them to fish.

Some brands of frozen bloodworms can cause problems to fish. Hikari is pretty safe and I have not heard any issues about that brand. Check all frozen food for frost damage (white frost on the food) and for defrosting (food usually looks different to normal). Avoid frozen food with damaged packaging or frost damage or food that has been defrosted and refrozen.

----------------------
If you can't get frozen fish food, you can make your own. You can put newly hatched brineshrimp into ice cube containers and freeze them, then store them in an airtight container in the freezer. You can do the same with Daphnia, rotifers and mosquitoe larvae.

You can buy fresh or frozen prawn/ shrimp (raw or cooked) and keep that in the freezer. Take out one prawn and remove the head, shell and gut (thin black tube in body) and throw those bits away. Then use a pr of scissors to cut the prawn tail into small bits and offer 1 or 2 bits at a time. Feed a few bits at a time until the fish are full.

You can also use raw fish, squid, octopus, mussel meat as well as prawn. If you have a meat mincer, you can put fish, prawn, squid and other types of marine organisms into it and make a mixture. Then put that into plastic bags and spread it out into thin sheets (3-6mm thick, 1/4-1/8inch) and freeze them. When you want some food, you break a bit off and defrost it and offer a little bit at a time.

I use to run the mixture through a mincer 3 times for my fish but it depends on the mincer and the fish being fed. For tetras and other small fishes, mince it several times.

----------------------
Baby guppies make a good live food if you are that way inclined. Feed the babies really well with a good quality flake food and then feed the guppies to other fish.

Glass/ Ghost shrimp will breed in aquariums and their young make excellent fish food too.

You can feed live or frozen fish foods as often as you like and most fish do better if they get frozen foods several times a week. I use to feed my fish dry food in the morning before work. In the evening I would feed dry food followed by frozen food and then live food. If you are trying to breed fish, then feed frozen or live food every day for several weeks before you breed the fish.

I prefer a small grater, Take out the frozen fish or prawn or octopus and pass it over the grater once or twice letting the bits fall into a cup of aquarium water leave for a minute or 2 and feed to fish, Thats how I feed my BBG's sometimes.

stainless-steel-small-grater-matthew1389-1708-03-Matthew1389@18.jpg

Thanks for the info guys! I'm not wanting to culture live food at the moment but I had thought about vinegar eels at one time. Or are those too small and only like fry food? Seems easy enough to keep.

Other than that, I just wanted to try frozen since I never have had enough fish before to make it worth getting. Lol.
 
I'm not wanting to culture live food at the moment
Well stay away from Bumblebee Gobys then, I currently have a experimental batch of baby brine shrimp Im trying to grow out a bit before feeding and Im about to start a tank for Daphnia, I also have a bucket of water outside to get live mosquito larvae and a small earth worm farm, I tried black worm and failed.

This is where I got the idea.

PS.
All my fish eat only live or frozen food, only the shrimp and Mystery snail get algae wafers
 
Well stay away from Bumblebee Gobys then, I currently have a experimental batch of baby brine shrimp Im trying to grow out a bit before feeding and Im about to start a tank for Daphnia, I also have a bucket of water outside to get live mosquito larvae and a small earth worm farm, I tried black worm and failed.

This is where I got the idea.

Don't worry, I'm not into difficult fish just yet. Lol. Let me get a low tech planted tank going well first! Then I can step up for other stuff maybe. Lol.

By the way, your tank is awesome!
 
Thanks, did you see the remodel on the BBG tank? Im doing a carpet.

BBG's can be difficult but only because they are fussy eaters but its well worth the effort especially when you can hand feed them and play chase my finger with them, once they settle in and get used to things they are quite cheeky and will happily try and pick at the hair on your arm when you put it in the tank.
 
Microworms are easier to culture and harvest than vinegar eels.

Vinegar eels are smaller than microworms but both can be fed to tetras and guppies.

Most live food cultures don't require much work. If you have a large pond you can keep daphnia in that for most of the year (temperature dependant).

Mozzie larvae appear in any container of water so if you have containers of water outside under a tree, it will get mozzie larvae in and you simply scoop them out when they appear. I must point out that it is illegal to culture mosquitoes in most countries so you should not set up containers specifically for culturing mozzies. But if you happen to leave a container outside under a tree and the sprinkler fills it up, then scoop out any mozzie larvae in it so they don't hatch out and add to the bitey infestation.
 
Thanks, did you see the remodel on the BBG tank? Im doing a carpet.

BBG's can be difficult but only because they are fussy eaters but its well worth the effort especially when you can hand feed them and play chase my finger with them, once they settle in and get used to things they are quite cheeky and will happily try and pick at the hair on your arm when you put it in the tank.

Yeah, I've been following your thread for it. It looks cool! and I have no douby that they are awesome fish. I'm just not ready for them quite yet. Lol.

Microworms are easier to culture and harvest than vinegar eels.

Vinegar eels are smaller than microworms but both can be fed to tetras and guppies.

Most live food cultures don't require much work. If you have a large pond you can keep daphnia in that for most of the year (temperature dependant).

Mozzie larvae appear in any container of water so if you have containers of water outside under a tree, it will get mozzie larvae in and you simply scoop them out when they appear. I must point out that it is illegal to culture mosquitoes in most countries so you should not set up containers specifically for culturing mozzies. But if you happen to leave a container outside under a tree and the sprinkler fills it up, then scoop out any mozzie larvae in it so they don't hatch out and add to the bitey infestation.

Thanks for the info Colin. I know it would be easy but I think I will skip the mosquito larvae. I'd worry I would get something else in the tank that shouldn't be there.

One day maybe I will try live cultures...but not right now. Lol. Not ready for that step yet!
 
The only things you get in mozzie larvae cultures are mozzie larvae that hang out just under the surface, and sometimes the red bloodworms (Chirominid midge larvae), which live on the bottom.

You might get dragonfly larvae but fish eat the baby dragonfly larvae and the big larvae are easy to see in a tank or tub of water. If you don't have plants or driftwood in the mozzie larvae container you probably won't get dragonfly larvae.
 
I think Byron's point about frozen foods not being nutritious is because unlike staple foods, they offer limited nutrients. This makes them fine as long as there are other foods for balance. In another thread, a member claimed to only feed his fish a particular larvae while we suggested that a more balanced diet just makes more sense long term.
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Not to go off on a tangent, but it's interesting that there's a legal problem with collecting mosquito larvae. From a generation perspective, every mosquito larvae collected for fish food results in hundreds if not thousands of fewer mosquitoes in the area!
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I'm almost surprised that brine shrimp are so well accepted/appreciated since they would never been seen by tropical fish in the wild - but then I guess we could say the same thing about fish foods made from seafoods!
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I have found a very productive way to culture daphnia. I got a starter culture from Aquabid last spring and have been culturing indoors (basement) and outdoors in bins all season. The outdoor bins crashed during the heat wave we had but the indoor cultures continue strong. I'm thinking of giving scuds and white worms a try. But these live foods are/would be merely a supplement to quality flake foods.
 
It is not illegal to collect mozzie larvae. It is illegal to culture them. You can collect as many as you like but most countries don't want people growing them because they spread disease.

If you dry out the Daphnia tubs that were outside, then leave them dry for a couple of months, there will probably be dormant eggs in the bottom that will hatch out and start a new culture. Just fill the tub with green water and wait a week, there should be daphnia everywhere. :)

Variety is what it's about. Feed the fish a variety of different foods for best results :)
 

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